November 2009. Perhaps the creepiest, craziest creatures of all.

With the memory of Halloween still fresh, boy, have I got a scary costume idea for wee ones next year! Harking back to recent articles of invasive species like Burmese pythons and snakehead fish, I suggest larger children trick or treat as those, but a Rasberry Crazy Ant costume is too, too perfect for a tiny tot, the tinier the better. I can hear the snickers: “Pink ants aren’t scary!” Yes, indeed they are, for they aren’t raspberry pink at all. They’re named for a pest exterminator, Tom Rasberry, who faced them after frantic homeowners sought help; he’s seen their numbers mushroom from about five hundred to a gazillion. Rasberry crazy ants (RCAs) are reddish brown with coarse hairs standing out from their bodies, easy enough to replicate in a costume. Add long antennae, pairs of dangling long legs, and the tyke is ready to go. I’ll tell you how frightening tiny ants the size of fleas can be if you’ll stifle the giggles.

There’s no formal scientific name for RCAs. They’re little aliens who befuddle scientists who at least recognize they’re in the family of the Caribbean crazy ant discovered in Bermuda a century ago. They have crazy ant aunts, uncles and cousins living in Florida. A South American branch of the family nearly brought Colombia to its knees, suffocating chickens and making farmers frantic ten years ago. The members of the genetically demented family are dubbed crazy for their frenzied, whirling dervish locomotion. RCAs don’t go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah, in orderly, regimented lines like sane ants following pheromone paths—but run fast, frenzied and wild in circles, swarming over surfaces and each other in their dizzy dance, blanketing landscapes, objects, small animals and birds. Their numbers are legion and ever increasing. Prophesies by entomologists are reminiscent of hordes of locusts and swarms of gnats, flies, fleas, all biblical plagues of nastiness. The ants have made mayhem in Houston, are spreading like a wicked grin across the face of Texas, and appear to be headed east, an army of teensy Visigoths or Huns intent on pillaging anything in their path. That would be us and our property. Hackles prickly yet, Hon?

Known as “tramp ants” (background music: Cher’s “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves”), they hitch rides in or on anything, potted plants, mulch, hay, boxes, cars, trucks, rail cars, etcetera, and are remarkably efficient hitch hikers, considering they’ve no thumbs with which to hitch or hike. They arrived in 2002 at Houston’s port aboard a cargo ship, disembarked, besieged the city, and established colonies under, in or on every available object. Houston yards lie blanketed with layered ants. Pets and people are housebound, but ants are breaking and entering, covering counters, furniture and floors with half an inch of ants crawling over each other and residents, who say it’s literally creepy to feel ants running all over them. They fill vacuum cleaner bags, empty them, then refill them. Now the ants go to the office, too, and workplace production declines as employees spend hours swatting ants. RCAs held a meeting, agreed, “This town ain’t big enough for all of us,” and some hitchhiked again. They occupied five Texas counties in 2008. In 2009 they occupy fourteen counties and have reached San Antonio, two hundred miles west of Houston. 

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