Fire Ants Gone Wild

If you’ve ever been bitten by a fire ant then you know how they got their name. One can only imagine this nightmare—in the early 1500s the Spanish plantations in the New World were overrun by fire ants—so thick they blackened the ceilings and floors.  The Spaniards tried to keep them out of their beds by putting the bed legs into bowls of water. It got so bad in Santo Domingo that the people abandoned their plantations, leaving them to the swarms of fire ants.

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