A dragonfly landed on my hand

ndoghouse said:
Anything living inside a parked Texas car in the summer just got there.
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:) i know, lived there for a few years. in baytown. got me ready for saudi which gets a tad hotter. i learned quick to keep the winders open a bit, drape a white towel over the steerin' wheel, gear shift and cover up the seat belt buckles too. and that was for a cloudy day. if the sun was out, you covered the seats too. i got terry cloth seat covers right quick. i went to the rhub al-khali (empty quarter) once, 150F in the shade, 98% humidity. you needed to carry about 20 gal. of water a day & drink almost continually if you were out of the air conditioned car or office. you could die real quick from dehydration. all our cars and office/living spaces were of course a/c'd.

anyhow, here it's a cloudy 19C (66F) at 64% humadidity - spidy is wearing his long-johns and a fleece jacket. global warming don't cha know...
 
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I measured 170ºF inside on the dashboard once. Thats only a degree or so from running a batch of moonshine in the passenger seat:D

I feel for ya in Saudi. My mom worked in Riyad and Jedda for many years and I heard plenty of stories from her about the heat. Ive done quite a bit of hiking in west Texas near Big Bend Park Terlingua to be exact and 125º was not too uncommon. It was dry tho so the shade was really comfortable. Anytime you found water it was shockingly cool due to evaporative cooling.
 
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Scara said:
Though apparently fire ants are great at reducing tick populations. ...
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THAT is one i have never heard and have grown up with both entire life....i can still go outside and step in fire ant mounds all over and have ticks drop out of trees in yard and land on shoulders and head on only a simple short walk to check water hose turned off. I wear a hat as much for bugs as i do sun...
all i can say is we are loaded with both the ants and ticks, and if this is what the tick population looks like greatly reduced, then bless the fire ants as it would be fatal to step outside otherwise with body instantly covered with them...deer, hog and dog and any other critter covered quite liberally here, as it is..
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Growing up in the SEUS on the coast with 68"-72" annual rainfall and grass and ground hot wet and steamy to bare feet and leeches under rocks, 100°F and 100% humidity a normal day with clockwork afternoon thunderstorms with steam rising and sun slanting in under the clouds as rain and hail fell, i came greatly to appreciate visits to Texas and later deployments to the middle east, while deployments to central America felt like home...
 
mtngunr said:
THAT is one i have never heard and have grown up with both entire life....i can still go outside and step in fire ant mounds all over and have ticks drop out of trees in yard and land on shoulders and head on only a simple short walk to check water hose turned off. I wear a hat as much for bugs as i do sun...
all i can say is we are loaded with both the ants and ticks, and if this is what the tick population looks like greatly reduced, then bless the fire ants as it would be fatal to step outside otherwise with body instantly covered with them...deer, hog and dog and any other critter covered quite liberally here, as it is..
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I recall reading an article a while back that talked about how ranchers in Texas had been going after fire ants for years, and were having some success and then began noticing a dramatic increase in ticks on their livestock. I think the article even mentioned that ranchers were reintroducing fire ants in some areas to fight the ticks. At a guess the reintroduced ants were kept to areas where you wouldn't be walking.
 
Scara said:
I recall reading an article a while back that talked about how ranchers in Texas had been going after fire ants for years, and were having some success and then began noticing a dramatic increase in ticks on their livestock. I think the article even mentioned that ranchers were reintroducing fire ants in some areas to fight the ticks. At a guess the reintroduced ants were kept to areas where you wouldn't be walking.
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That's interesting - We don't have fire ants up North but ticks are becoming a problem. Especially the ones from the States traveling North and carrying Lyme's disease over. We are seeing increasing cases of Lyme infections in our southern Provinces.
 
You do NOT want fire ants...they cause human fatalities also, especially children...even in cribs...elderly in nursing homes...elderly who fall in back yards and cannot get up...they disembarked in Mobile from banana boats from South America and have been spreading ever since....the only way i could see them helping with ticks is in land where there are no bushes and trees....they go after everything they find in a river of them....losses in cattle from fire ants are enormous....i have trouble believing ranchers would actually try to reintroduce them....the fire ant mounds in the South outnumber in pasture the piles of cow patties....that is how seriously they infest....where it is impossible to put a blanket on the ground and sun or picnic without them finding you and seeing how you taste and then stinging you with prussic acid which immediately raises a scarring pustule..
you probably will find far more fatalities from the ants annually than from Lyme disease...like ten times more
 
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mtngunr said:
You do NOT want fire ants...they cause human fatalities also, especially children...even in cribs...elderly in nursing homes...elderly who fall in back yards and cannot get up...they disembarked in Mobile from banana boats from South America and have been spreading ever since....the only way i could see them helping with ticks is in land where there are no bushes and trees....they go after everything they find in a river of them....losses in cattle from fire ants are enormous....i have trouble believing ranchers would actually try to reintroduce them....the fire ant mounds in the South outnumber in pasture the piles of cow patties....that is how seriously they infest....where it is impossible to put a blanket on the ground and sun or picnic without them finding you and seeing how you taste and then stinging you with prussic acid which immediately raises a scarring pustule..
you probably will find far more fatalities from the ants annually than from Lyme disease...like ten times more
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That's... worse than I've ever seen, and I've seen some pretty bad fire ants.
 
This not to mention destroyed farm equipment hitting mounds....and what you see above ground is only tip of iceberg to what is below in colony....you fall or sit on a mound by accident and panic, you just might be done...my own mother was nearly killed by them as a child, fell in a mound and took stings in eyes, nose, basically all of head, arms, upper body right at start flailing around in a mound larger than her, was blinded and panicked and trouble breathing and her grandmother saved her.....what is fun is tromping through muddy fields and finding half an ant bed stuck to your rubber boot....then you find out exactly how far away a water hose can be...the other side of the universe...
 
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But after the spider discussion I started to Google some. That's when I saw that cute spider (peacock)
peacock-spider-1.jpg
 
I need one of those....would work great for tick control...most ticks are Baptist and Pentecostal and hate Mardi Gras and would not be caught dead at any celebration....now, Saturday night at a liquor store, they do not hesitate to wear Groucho glasses noses and i never understood that part?

Which makes me wonder how ticks look with the glasses?...Snow Wolf?
 
You came up with a Mardi Gras spider, and can you come up with a tick wearing a Groucho Marx disguise?.

Very scary if you actually understand that deeply...probably a California thing....you know how many folk it takes to screw in a lightbulb in California?....the answer is 31, one to screw the lightbulb in, and the other 30 to share the experience...
 
I see ... There you go (2 min of research and 1 min of dirty cut and paste)

patrick-warburton-himself-says-about-the-tick-EJ.jpg

Elton John would probably laugh at it... Patrick Warburton, not so sure.
 
I just threw up a little bit in my mouth. Please no more pictures.......
 
Bawanna said:
I just threw up a little bit in my mouth. Please no more pictures.......
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Following the brown recluse stories... The associated pictures found were rather shocking so I chose not to share.

At least my tick with glass interpretation was harmless.
 
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I agree. Specially that last one, durn good thing I throw up a little bit in my mouth often and I've learned to contain it in larger volumes or the chiefs new rug would have been plumb tarnished for sure.

Course he's at Sturgis with his Harley so be awhile before I'd bet a gluteous maximus chewing.
 
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