Attack of the Fire Ants

The thunderstorm passed as quickly as it came.

It always happened this way in Florida during the summer. The sky could blacken in minutes during the height of the daytime heat. Then it would explode in a symphony of pounding rain and thunderous claps and crashes.

Ted spent many of his childhood summers with his great-grandmother, near the waters of Tampa Bay, an area known as the Lightning Capital of the World – and for good reason. There was no other place on Earth that could rival the intensity and spectacle of the storms here. Oftentimes the pounding sun would reappear even before the tail end of the rain moved on.

Ted loved to linger outside when the storms were over breathing in the musty, soaked dirt smells suspended in the rain mist. He was mesmerized by how the sun made the wet pavement glisten and cause steam to rise from its surface.

On one particular day, the rain filled a ditch alongside the yard with water. Ted couldn’t resist climbing down into it to enjoy its coolness and feel the wet grass beneath his bare feet.

It was a delight. The water came halfway up Ted’s calves. He began to feel a tingling sensation between his first two toes, then another sharper twinge on his ankle. Then the prickles he felt seemed to engulf both of his feet, and they came on so suddenly he could no longer keep track of them.

Ted climbed up the bank out of the water to discover hundreds of red ants crawling over his skin, hungrily scurrying about and running into each other, some even trying to climb up his leg. He dropped to the ground furiously trying to slap them off and wipe them on the grass.

Once the angry ants were off Ted, the reality of what happened set in and he ran into the house crying and yelling for his grandmother. He felt yet another sharp bite on his ankle, and it by itself hurt more than all of the others. He lifted his foot to find a lone ant, an emblazoned warrior intent on fighting to the end.

Enraged by the ant’s audacity, Ted brought it to a violent death with a quick slap of his hand.

Ted’s grandma sat him on the couch and brought a pan of cold water and instructed him to put his feet in, an order he obeyed without question.

As he sat catching his breath, he began inspecting his feet, which were blazing red and starting to swell with small, blistering pimples.

Ted never knew such ferocious ants existed, much less that he’d have to do battle with them. He thought about telling the story to all his friends, and he knew they’d marvel at what he had gone through. He was lucky to have lived through it, he would tell them.