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Southeast Texas is one big fire ant colony. My wife always used to ask me why I move around all the time – why I never stand still. You would adopt a fidgety characteristic if you grew up on an anthill too.

I’ve seen grown men at a church picnic remove pants, shirts – the works – and head for the water hose because they stood still too long while talking.

They don’t get you right at first. They wait until you are pretty much covered, then attack at the same time. You would think you could feel them crawling on you before you were 60% covered, but it happens. I don’t know how they do it… It’s one of those deals where you look down and see an ant. Then you see another one. Then your eyes focus and you realize you are covered with ants. That only happens once or twice and you learn to move around a lot.

I always thought that in the overall scheme of things, chiggers were a bigger pain than fire ants.

The reason that fire ants attack at once is because they respond to movement. So if you are standing still, the ants will be climbing up your legs and will not be stinging. But as soon as you move, they all will sting at once.

I've been going to Alabama on a regular basis since I was a kid. This is the worst year for fire ants I have yet seen. The pastures that I used to play baseball on are covered with fire ant mounds, making baseball impossible. When you walk out there, you must keep moving and watch where you are walking at all times. Even if you decide to lay down on a piece of ground far from the nearest mound, they will find you for their tunnels often run 15 feet underground away from the mounds and they are always foraging. There can be as many as 30 million foraging fire ants per acre (in infested areas) and they will try to eat anything that stands still for less than a minute.