Yikes! Jumping… ants?

Now that I’m on holidays from work, I thought things would relax a bit, but no. Today, I pulled out the lawnmower and headed to work on my front lawn. Afterall, with family visiting for Christmas, it has to be in decent shape. All of the recent rain has made it hard to keep down. I seen the usual things while cutting, you know, skinks, spiders and even a small frog(he looked like a small brown leopard frog with a yellow throat). I did manage to run over an ant hill. Normally this isn’t a big issue, but it was strong looking and rigid. A few dozen large black ants poured out of it.

My spidey sense was tingling almost immediately. These ants were big, about 9/16″ or 14mm. The ends of their limbs, their mandibles(teeth) and whatnot were orange and they jumped. The spastic short jumping, quick running and strange colours were enough to set off the alarm. I briskly walked inside and describe them to my wife, she had no idea. I went back out with a bottle and carefully collected two for a closer look.

It took no time at all to look them up on the ‘net. Jack Jumper Ants. As a read down, it gets from ugly, to bad, to worse. Jack jumper ants are stinging ants. Meaning they do not bite but like wasps and such, have stingers. Not so bad… oh, very aggressive. We have lots of wasps and bees in Canada, nothing scary. Stings may case swelling, fever, lowered blood pressure, blisters and in cases of multiple stings, death.

Then I read that jack jumper ants are responsible for more deaths in Tasmania than spiders, sharks and snakes combined. Well, I was out there pretty quick with our best poison. I can’t really appreciate them being on my front lawn, especially where the children play. They don’t look so nice either.

Read out them for yourself at Wikipedia

One from my front lawn.

Kanagroo Encounter

On my way to work this morning, I think I experienced an authentic Australian thing. I see kangaroos quite often on my travels back and forth to work (I see maybe 5-10 a week).  Today was a bit different though. Not far outside of town, a big kangaroo hopped across the road. I slowed down quickly because they tend to move in groups (called mobs). The second ‘roo I came across went across the road then quickly darted back into the center.

I’ve heard a couple of times from the guys I work with that roos will sometimes  run in front of your car for a fair amount of time. This was such a case. It hopped along in front of me, moving back and forth a bit but never moving too far to either side.  I suppose the stories about roos being caught inbetween headlights are true because it hopped in front of me for about 500 meters at about 37kph. It wasn’t full grown.