Irony (or, “With friends like that…”)

I took advantage of the lovely weather to wash my wife’s car this afternoon. As a result, I was wearing my Teva sandals when we later took Abbye for her evening constitution.

About halfway around the park, while standing on the sidewalk waiting for the dog to complete her necessary inspection of every blade of grass in an area of particular dogly attraction, I felt a slight itch on my big toe, under the sandal strap. In a few seconds, however, that itch turned into an exquisitely sharp pain.

I bent down and peeled back the strap to expose the culprit. You guessed it…it was a fire ant chewing industriously on my toe, determined to make me pay for apparently violating the colony’s personal space.

I named this humble publication after the tiny fire ant out of a grudging admiration for some of its characteristics, chiefly tenacity and the ability to impact its surroundings in a measure far out of proportion to its tiny size. You can’t really wipe out a fire ant colony; the best you can hope for is to irritate them enough to make them move into your neighbor’s yard.

OTOH, they can also be vicious, vindictive, nasty little buggers and I felt no remorse in sending this particular representative straight to the bowels of fire ant hell.