Watch where you sit !!!

pitdog

pitdog

Joined
Apr 13, 2007
Messages
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I went on one of my little hikes today and about half way round I decided to sit in the sun and have a drink of tea from my flask.
All well and good you say but where I was about to sit I noticed these....
Francisking001.jpg


And a close up of the little buggers....
Francisking003.jpg


They were even on my hands just from taking the pics....watch where you sit !!!:eek:
 
Woooooeeee thats alotta ants, I have had similar experiences where I was about to sit on a log and you dont notice the little buggers until there in your pants.
 
Pitdog, did you happen to notice if they were just swarming or if there was a war going on? From the closeup, it looks like there are two types (I think I can see some that are all black and some that have the red heads).

I've seen this sort of thing a few times and in all but two there seemed to be a pitched battle going on. On the other two occasions, I wasn't able to tell what the ants were doing, but they certainly seemed to be doing a lot of it.

(Cool pictures BTW).
 
I wonder if ants have any food value to them, in an emergency. Those look like fat lil' buggers.
 
Yikes. That would have been a very memorable sip of tea. Glad to hear that you spotted them before sitting down!

Cheers,

- Mike
 
Somewhere in the dusty parts of my memory I recall something about some aboriginal group or another crushing up ants in some water sweetened with a sweet tree sap and making a lemonade like drink. Seems the formic acid in the ants gave the tartness and the tree sap the sweetness, naturally. Can't recall anything else about it.

I remember remembering about when an ant bit my lip once while in the field at Ft. Drum some years back. This kind of lemony, citrus flavor kinda flowed from it when I licked the spot.

If y'all don't mind, I don't think I'll try that with the fire ants here in Texas. They HURT!
 
upnorth said:
I wonder if ants have any food value to them, in an emergency. Those look like fat lil' buggers.
Click to expand...

Ray Mears recommends Wood Ants in a survival situation. In one of his series and the book Essential Bushcraft I think it is, he shows a method of gathering them & boiling them up.
 
Ants [at least some] contain about 35 % protein. In some parts of the world they are eaten regularly and provide protein in an otherwise protein deficient area.
 
mete said:
Ants [at least some] contain about 35 % protein. In some parts of the world they are eaten regularly and provide protein in an otherwise protein deficient area.
Click to expand...

Ants are indeed a great food source.. And they do taste a little like lemon! I have eaten many an ant, and although it takes quite a few to curb the appetite, they are tasty! Try 'em!

(Mikey says "Try it, you'll like it!)
 
I live not that far from Vancouver Island, a couple of years ago while camping (Chehailis lake) we had a hatching of wood ants. After a couple of people in our group got bit, we ended up going home. Most of us had younger kids and the ants were over everything.
Real pain in the a$$
 
We have many ant hills around here (West Michigan). They'll crawl up your legs and start bitting when theres about a hundred in your pants. If you don't make them mad, you can creep up to their hill and actually hear them if you get close enough (I don't reccomend it though). The two "different kinds" of ants are worker ants and soldier ants. I believe it is the tiny ones that'll bite you.
 
We have common black ants which don't do much and just a few miles away tiny red ants that bite like crazy. Never heard of wood ants before. Great pics!
 
Holy mother of mercy! Glad you didn't sit on those! I've NEVER seen anything like THAT! They'd have eaten you alive I reckon!
 
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