A. I. M. P. Ants In My Pants

Range Line Road

We have had a very rainy past couple of days in central Wisconsin; yesterday it rained over 3 inches by us, and up to several inches in other areas to the west of us. So much so, that they called off area schools to our west. Mary and I went for a ride this afternoon and thought we would go down to a couple of large ponds where we like to go birding south of where we live. We drove down and discovered that the small streams were swollen and overflowing into the woods. Some of the gravel roads had been under water and badly deteriorated.

We went to the first pond on Smokey Hill Road, approaching from the south and discovered that the road was covered with water and the wind had blown some "stuff onto the road; it looked too dangerous to proceed so we turned around and went back the way we came. The second pond was on Range Line Road as we headed north we saw the sign indicating the road was closed; we figured as much but we just wanted to check it out and take some pics with the phone; my camera was at home. So we turned the car around.

As I was maneuvering a turn around Mary asked what that black stuff was on the water. I parked the car and got out . The substance was sort of spongy looking, black, and sort of oily or something weird like that. I looked closely so as not to get my feet wet and discovered that they were ants; thousands of them, maybe millions, it made my skin crawl. Mary got out of the car looked and was a little disturbed by them as well so she jumped back into the car; but I wanted to look around a little more. I took a couple of pictures; oh yeah I saw a small fire snake as well and took it's pic.

This was only one of the clusters of tiny black ants.

All of the sudden my leg felt itchy, and I scratched it. When I looked down at my pants there were hundreds of ants crawling up my pant legs looking for higher ground. I slapped my pant legs and brushed all of the ants off and started to walk away from them, but when I looked down again there were dozens more crawling up my pant legs. I frantically slapped them off. By now I am getting a little terror stricken. I wanted to scream like a little girl but held back the urge, then I realized where they were coming from;

THEY ARE CRAWLING OUT OF MY SHOES; OH GOD SAVE ME!

So what happened next was kind of embarrassing. I kicked off my shoes and shook out the ants; I looked down the road, a couple cars were approaching, but were still a little ways down the road so did what any self-respecting panic stricken person would do. I took off my pants on the road shook out all of the ants and tried to get my trousers back on before I was arrested for being indecent; (we did have a police car pull over and turn around after we passed him on the way home; he followed us for about 5 minutes) I threw my shows down hard on the road and scratched around inside my shoes until I was sure all of the ants were out and put them back on, got into the car, and sped away as the two vehicles came near.

 I was attacked by the Empire of the Ants. MOMMY!