Watch where you sit !!!

Man, thats a meal! Les woulda ate that in a heartbeat.
 
Growing up in Western Washington State, we had huge ant mounds, like 6 and 7 feet tall that were protected under some conservation law or other. These mounds housed huge colonies of non-aggressive, non-biting, ants. Later, I was lucky enough to get stationed close to home at Fort Lewis and there was this guy in the unit, I wish I could remember his name, that came to our straight-leg infantry unit after being "released from duty" with 2/75 Rangers because his behavior and intellectual level was considered to be a danger to the other Rangers. How this guy made it through Jump school or RIP is beyond me. He used to take great joy, when on FTX at Lewis, in kicking over these protected mounds, despite being told not to. We were TDY at Fort Hood and he had fallen asleep during guard duty and some of the guys filled the hood of his ECWCS jacket with the red biting ants they've got in Texas. Guy woke up screaming and his neck and face swelled up like a balloon. Poetic justice? You decide.

I understand the ant larvae, rather than the adults are the better source of protein.
 
I've eaten the larva and pupa of larger wood ants, roast in a pan over the fire. Quite tasty - rather nut-like in flavor.
 
Anyone here from SoCal? When I was a kid, there were ants up in the mountains we called "The Uber Ants." They were about 1/2" long, red/black, and hairy. They could bite, with formic acid in their saliva. They could sting (IIRC). But the big deal is that they could spray tiny steams of formic acid up to 11" (best seen in a beam of sunlight). I still have a knife with little lines of corrosion from stirring up the ants and drawing sprays of acid. Their nests were mounds of pine needles that were a lot wider than high - up to 8 ft. in diameter. Their "highways" that radiated out from the nest were easy to see due to being cleared down to the sandy soil. There were NO other ants seen in the AoO of these guys!
 
Yikes! I had a similar near-experience while scouting for a set-up while turkey hunting a couple weekends ago. I found the perfect tree and proceded to clear the debris around it to make a comfortable place to sit. I pulled away a chunk of bark and disturbed a large enough colony of little red ants. It was a dead tree, so I'm presuming they were wood ants. I got out of there quickly! Too bad, was a good set-up too.
 
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