my parents and i moved down to louisiana. we had mounds of dirt in our back yard. some of the mounds belonged to the benign sand shrimp, while others to that of malevolent fire ants. one day, being only about 5, i decided that it would be my duty to eradicate the world (backyard) of fire ants. (maybe i was just bored and dediced to be destructive and kick over the mounds.) anyway, the first couple of mounds must have been sand shrimp, but by the third or forth, i really pissed off some fire ants. i became a screaming child in pain within seconds. i had ants biting me up to my knee, and proceeded to strip anything that could possibly contain them from my body.
our neighbor came to my rescue. having been a lived with the evil bugs all her life, she knew just what to do: made a paste out of meat tenderizer and smeared it all over my bites. almost as good as calamine lotion for chicken pox.
i think it was a good deal of time before i ventured near a mound of dirt. however, once over my fear of the backyard due to the fire ant incident, i decided to be an explorer and find out what exactly was in the middle of the pampas grass. i seem to remember it was a kid who did not want to come back out due to the sharp edges along the individual grass blades.
but, yeah, i have fond memories of those fire ants…