What
ya gon'a do today Bob?
"Kill
firrre ants, hu hu hu...hu," I would always say with my stupid chuckle to Ol' Bobby F., our suppervisor when I was a park chemical applicator.
"Now looky here, Bob, there has got to be more to do than kill them ol' ants," Bobby would always say.
It was winter-esque weather, at least as winter as Dallas, Texas, could get. It was always a good task to torment the ubiquotous little feroschious beasts. It was better to hunt them down in the summer, but there was other stuff to do in the good weather.
Should have never have let that good paying, benefit laden job go. But, water under the bridge can't be cried over. It was 1985 and I let the collective voices of society's norms and mores get to me five years later, and I quit to seek my own business endevor.
Fool.
My good friend and colleague who worked in play ground maintenace, Ol' Robert Lee, always gave me shit about my ants. "You could spray them goddamn ants 'til we are all 150 years old and the fuck'n bastards will still gooble you up in your coffin in the cemetary, white boy."
All joking aside, the little dangerous ants had taken over Texas long before Heide and I moved there. Word was they worked their way up from South America or Africa or some damn place. Whatever, they ain't leaving now.
The little bastards were famous for boiling out of their ground level mounds usually hiden in the southern grass. Any one who has worked outside in Texas and claim they have never heard of fire ants is just plain stupid...or a damn lier.
An unsuspecting child, cable digger, or landscaper, would stand on a fire ant mound. The creatures will boil up your leg. By the time they get to your ass, they start biting. By then it is too late. You could easily be bitten 200 times in 30 seconds. People with alergies are fucked. Small children have been known to be practically eaten alive.
There was a chemical called Diazinon. It was like gasoline, and I know it made me feel sick after working with it after a while. I don't know if it is even sold anymore. There were older chems in the store room with skull and cross bones on the old bags. Dazinat comes to mind. We spead granuals, spayed liquid, and set the damn mounds on fire. They were particularily evil beasts in wet weather. The water in the ground would drive them to the surfice to live. That pissed them off. Irrigation had a simular outcome as rainy weather.
Basically, witnessing the dumping of enough insecticide on East Dallas to kill the ants, rivaled the herbicide use to defoliate Viet Nam during...'Nam. In retrospect, my general impression regarding ant warfare is that all the toxic assault ever did was just piss the little ants off.
I was bitten enough, even with my sensitivities to stings, cuts, and bites. I survived somehow. Another reason to hate Texas. The cold weather north has seemed to slow the beasts' migration.
No retrospect about working outside in Texas would be honest, if I failed to mention the dreaded...fire ant. An intreging friend of mine back then, a dude named Lea, who spoke fluent Spanish and had lived all over hell, took great pleasure in torturing the fire ant as a species. Ol' Lea would grab a fire ant with a pair of tweezers. Then he would painstakenly slash off its head with a razor blade.
The fuck'n tiny monster's head would thrash about on the table with little jaws still chomping away at nothing but air.
Fuck'n A!
Note: This blog "Jobs of Bob" Category does not list the jobs chronologically - I write about the experiences as they pop up in my memory and I often revisit an older job. Go to the Cooldadiomedia Web site and the Jobs of Bob Page for an ordered chronology.
Wisconsin Military Service Person Special Mention of the Week
(each week Cooldadiomedia mentions a Wisconsin service person killed in Iraq or Afghanistan)
Army Private First Class Jon Bailey St. John II, 25, Neenah, Wisconsin, was killed on Saturday, January 27, 2007, in Taji, Iraq. Taji is just north of Baghdad. He was one of three soldiers killed when a roadside bomb exploded near his vehicle during convoy operations. PFC St. John was assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Troop, 2nd Squadron, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division out of Fort Hood, Texas. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel mentioned St. John was born May 13, 1981, in Neenah, Wisconsin. He excelled in many areas while in school and was known for his proficiency in math, tennis, football, guitar, and piano. Jon graduated from St. Mary Central High School of Menasha (now in Neenah, Wisconsin) in 1999. He was said to love reading and made the Dean's List at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse where he majored in business and marketing. He had six credits left to graduation. He had also attended the University of Wisconsin-Fox Valley. The Journal Sentinel went on to note that during college Jon worked at a ski hill near La Crosse and enjoyed downhill skiing. He also enjoyed snowmobiling and hunting grouse and deer in Bayfield County. St. John joined the Army in 2005 and was deployed to the Middle East in 2006. He working as a machine gunner on top of a Humvee. The Web site iraq.pigtye.net (a site with military casualty data) quoting information from an Appleton/Fox Cities data base, mentioned Jon's home area was in the small community of Vineland a town of about 1900 just south of Neenah. At the time of his death Jon St. John II was survived by his parents Jon and Katie St. John; and, his sister Sonja. Jon St. John II was the 70th Wisconsin military service person to be killed in Iraq since the spring of 2003.
As of this blog entry's posting date:
98,585 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
9,761 Iraqi Security Forces have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
4,432 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
1356 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
318 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
824 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
31,979 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
8,951 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
102 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
24 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
144 journalists (several nationalities) have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
21 journalists (various nationalities) have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
Wisconsin military service person special mention of the week, military casualty, and journalist casualty information sources: Committee to Protect Journalists; cnn.com; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; washingtonpost.com; thehighground.org; Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs; iraqbodycount.org; www.defense.gov/news/casualty.pdf; and, icasualties.org.
