90% of the Wildlife in Mississippi is out to bite YOU!

Well now that we are officially in the AYUSA program and an exchange student from Korea will be coming to live with us for a year, we have gone into study mode so that we won’t be totally ignorant. We may be a so called global economy but by and large we Americans are still dumb as a stump when it comes to knowing what makes other country’s ‘tick’.

That said, I’ve been thinking about how to ease Ji-Eun into our Mississippi culture of hot muggy summer days and tall glasses of iced sweet tea. She says she is very excited to learn about our foods and customs.

There is something else that I am going to have to teach her about and that is that 90% of the ‘wildlife’ in Mississippi is out to get you. I’m talking about the all those bugs that love to ‘bug’ us so well. This is by no stretch of the imagination a complete list but it’s the ones that stand out to me personally.

Chiggers: You never see them but they can find you. The chigger causes more misery than any other pest in Mississippi. I can only say one word here. OFF!

Horse flies: These are very large flies that apparently have the teeth of a piranha and can take out a divot of flesh when they bite. They sound like a small aircraft as they buzz their intended victim like a great white shark homing in on bare skin. If you don’t believe that they hurt, just watch a horse when they get bit.

Mosquitoes: There are too many species to name and the females all want a piece of you. Use DEET, OFF, or CUTTERS. Some people recommend Skin So Soft but my experience has been that all that did was make me even more enticing to those blood sucking vampires.

Ground Hornet: Better know to me as yellow jackets. They can dig out soccer ball sized nests in the ground and all it takes the vibration of the lawn mower to stir them up. They come boiling out of an unseen hole in the ground and you can’t run fast enough to get away from them. Abandon the lawnmower and run because if one stings you, you now have a flashing sign that says enemy hanging over your luckless head! They don’t lose their stingers and can zap you multiple times. A word of caution, don’t sit back and toss down a few cold ‘coolers’ and think you can sneak back in after dark, pour gas or oil down in that hole and pop them with a fire cracker and it will be bye bye ground hornets. Nope! I have seen that stupid human trick and all that happened was the explosion blew up a corner of the goof balls yard, it showered really angry insects over a wide area of the neighborhood and there was no amount of beer available to make those guys feel better from strafing they got from those wasps. Call the professionals and ‘Budman’ is not his name.

Fire Ants: Ants in Mississippi come in several types; tiny, sugar, carpenter, big red and my personal favorite “Sweet Jeeeeeesus! Get ‘em off meeeee! The fire Ant! The Imported Fire Ant or as they are know locally ‘Them !@# $%^&* $@#^*&^ Fire Ants” is a 1/4 in long ant that hitched a ride from South America in tropical plants. These hurtful little immigrants have been waging a successful invasion ever since they arrived. They are a smallish, red, virulent blight on the south. You learn to identify their mounds by trial and error…very quickly in my case. If you see a mound of fine dirt, taller than your grass, turn over a rock, or just stand in soft soil, chances are you have just disturbed a nest of these aggressive little buggers.

I made that mistake once while working around my gold fish pond. I was moving rocks and planting hostas and bulbs and before I knew what was happening I was covered to my waist before the first one stung me. As soon as the first one stung it signaled the other 2 million ants that were on me to commence the attack.

The resulting mass sting led to a wild flailing of the arms, clog dancing and a rather spontaneous desire for public nudity because I shucked my overalls and shirt right out there in the yard. There I was, for the Good Lord and any body else that drove by to see, running through my yard in my under wear, slapping at the ants and trying to get to the epi-pen that was in the house because I knew what was going to happen next. I spent the next few days going to see Dr. Longest for a daily shot. I had over 76 pus filled, very hard, itchy knots from the waist line down to my toes. I learned very quickly not to scratch them or it would just make it worse.

The armadillo, another pest in my book, is the ONLY know predator of the fire ant. That is why they tear up your yard. It’s not just for fun; they actually like to eat those little fiery creatures. No wonder it’s so hard to kill an armadillo. Anything that feasts on a fire ant is pretty darn tough.

Ticks: what can you say about a tick except it’s a sneaky blood sucking pest that you don’t want to find on you or your pet. Again I say OFF!

So as my family learns about another culture and how it ‘ticks’, I can only hope that Ji-Eun won’t be finding out about our ‘ticks’. I’ve got to go get a case of OFF!