Fire Ants

Just another story (true, though).
While a missionary - where I learned to drive trucks - we had our equipment set up on a giant field about a half mile square. For whatever reason, the leaders decided the wanted to set up shop right in the middle of that giant field.
Okay. Well, at the time, we had this particularly strange phenomenom following us everywhere we would go. Rain. I don't mean a little sprinkle, either, I mean, wherever we went, the rain would come down in buckets and would literally flood the place out. It go so "old", that when we were invited to a farming community in Illinois that was undergoing a drought (the reason they invited us: they had heard we brought rain with us!), and it was decided we would go there for a short time at least, we KNEW we were in for HELL because of the rain that would inevitably come with us. And sure enough, it rained and rained and rained, for almost a week straight. I guess the farmers were happy, we were NOT.

Regardless, the rain followed us to this giant field as well. And it rained. And rained - and rained. It rained until there was at least 10 inches of standing water - which must have been millions of gallons of water considering the size of that field. Our semis - were sunk in mud. The leaders wanted all equipment moved off the field - which is all fine and well - but there was this problem of the fact that the nearest street in any direction was at least 300 yards.

What made it worse? The fire ants. These are the type of ants that don't need or want a reasong to start burrowing into your flesh - if they find it, they're gonna start digging. Everyone thought that getting those trucks out of there short of a tow truck with a VERY long cable on it was impossible.

I set out to prove them wrong. Why? A challenge. I started building a plywood road. Took 2 4X8 sheets of plywood and shoved them in front of the steer tires. 2 more and shoved them in front of the drives. While I'm wading around in this water, I have ant after ant after ant finding my legs - the only dry place around besides climbing up onto the trucks - and then start the "burrowing process". The worst bite occured when one of those wicked things climbed all the way up my leg, found my ****, got on the **** of my ****, and started digging. I can say that the pain was so excruciating (and shocking), I literally pulled my pants down right there out of reaction to get that thing off of "there".

Well, I got that Western Star to rockin' back and forth. She finally found her way up onto the plywood and it was all over from there. It was a HUGE ordeal to keep getting out, going back through the water, getting the now-left-behind planks of wood and stick them back in front of the tires, but I did it - it took hours, but I succeeded.

At the end of the day - and that particular venture on that field - in other words by the time we actually drove off and out of that town, I counted over 200 ant bites all over my legs, and those were the ones I could see.

 

Yeah, that person undoubtedly would have been hauled off to a room somewhere and detained. Mexico's a pretty strange place to drive - you get in an accident with a Mexican National you're at fault regardless. They will impound your vehicle - unless you have good insurance.