When ants attack

I had my first experience with the feared Soldier ants of Tanzania yesterday evening. I had heard many stories of them, but had not had the chance to see or feel them in action. But I had been warned, and several people had told me they were around recently.

It was Friday evening, and we all had been working a bit hard this week. So we decided the appropriate way to manage such stresses was by having an impromptu happy hour before dinner on my back porch (which is fenced in, pictures are coming at some pt, I promise. We had a combination of vodka, an african Gin, several mixers, and several bottles of Kili beer. After we all had several beverages, we migrated to the house next door to eat dinner. It was after dinner that the trouble started.

We decided to spend the rest of the night playing Yahtzee, but the yahtzee set was in my house. I walked back to my house, which is only about 50 ft, in the dark. It was about 30 ft into this walk that i began to feel them. By the time I got to my door and into my house, my feet were covered in aboout 20-30 1cm long ants, many of them making their way up my pant legs or biting into my toes. Flicking them off once attached was extremely difficult, and even a bit painful. And I had to rapidly strip my pants off (I am sure this is where the phrase "Ants in your pants" came from) to be sure to remove those rocketing up towards my nethers.

Once removed, these beasts are impossible to kill, often taking 4-5 stomps to send them on their way.

When the sun rose this morning, I had the chance to go outside and look around for these critters. They were very much still there, burrowing through the dirt rapidly across the sidewalk and yard, marching 4-5 ants wide, erecting walls on either side of their makeshift highway with ants that were not so fortunate to survive the journey, and other ants standing on their hind legs to protect them. When they hit patches or just dirt, they burrowed, creating walls of the loose sediment. Later in the day, there were even tunnels opening along this path, where you could see the ants moving through tunnels underneath.

The amount of organization was really impressive. That being said, I hope I don't have to see these critters again. I took photos, and will try to upload to flickr when I can. I also heard there is a swahili word for these critters, when I found out what it is I will be sure to post it.