fire ants

The heat outside is oppressive. Phoenix is like that. It’s half-past 3 in the afternoon and the circle thermometer says it’s 118 out. But we’re on a mission.

Kurtis has a can of gasoline. I’ve got matches. We’re going to have some fun.

The backyard is full of orange traffic cones. We revel in adding to our graveyard almost nightly. Me drunk. Him stoned. The other two roommates, Teddy, the anal-retentive who writes down every interesting quote from a book, magazine or television show that piques his interest so he can use them later to sound intelligent; and Mark, the greasy-New York accented loser who can’t keep a job for more than five minutes; add to the mayhem as well. But they’re both sound asleep right now. How they can sleep when it’s that hot out, and almost as hot inside without air conditioning has never made any sense to me.

We get to the back gate. Kurtis pops the lock on the door and we go outside.

There it is: a giant mound of dirt. It rose from nowhere in just a couple of days. If it hadn’t been for Mark getting attacked last night while tossing two cones over the fenced in yard we may not have known about it for weeks, when all those damn fire ants decided to attack the house.

“Fuck, that’s enormous,” Kurtis said.

I just stared in awe.

The little buggers were crawling all over the place. A bird, still alive, was being meticulously pulled apart by 1,000s of them a couple yards away. It probably landed to take a chomp out of some trash tossed out of the taco joint across the railroad tracks, but instead, it became the meal for the ants.

“Let’s get this going,” I said.

Kurtis walked over to the mound. All around it were smaller holes. That was our plan of attack. Going for the mound could be a suicide mission. One hit on it, and they would march on you like the German Blitzkrieg.

I looked at Kurt’s boots. They were old, black and tough. Most likely left over from his days in the Army when he used to dismantle bombs. According to his stories, he had shrapnel in his foot and lost his eyesight because of his job. His Coke bottle glasses definitely were a sign of bad eyesight, which he said was 20-20 before his work with the United State of America. I then looked at my feet. Flip flops. Brilliant decision there, Jones, I thought to myself. Hot as hell, rocks and glass everywhere, and we’re about to bomb the hell out of a fire ant mound. Running shoes would have been a better choice.

Kurt takes the can of gas and begins pouring it down one of the holes. Then another. And yet another.

He has a maniacal grin on his face – a cross between George C. Scott’s Patton and Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durden. I stand back and watch. It’s quite a sight to see.

“Yo! Dreamer-boy, hand me those matches,” he yells, yanking me out of my imagination. I hand him the matches.

Two seconds later, he drops one in the hole. The flame flickers as I watch it fall into the hole perfectly. It would have taken me dozens of attempts just to get a match in the hole on a free drop. Who knows how many times it would have taken to do it with it still lit.

I see Kurt running towards me. Soon, I understand why.

Fire is flying out of the holes. And ants are scurrying out of 100 more holes. Some of them on fire.

We sit and watch this from a safe distance. Soon, some of the black smoke comes out of the giant mound.

“Round 1 to us,” Kurtis says.

At that time, Teddy comes out of the house yawning. He walks over to us and shakes his head.

“You know what boys?” he says. We know not to ask anything yet, he’s about to say some more.

He scratches his belly and yawns again.

“We have gas heat,” and he goes back inside.

I reach down to the cooler I brought outside before this all started. It’s 120 degrees out now. I wonder if our little fire had anything to do with that rise. I find a beer and pop the top, downing half of it on the first sip.

“You want one?” I say to Kurt.

“Nah, got my own,” he says, reaching into the pocket of his beat up leather jacket for his pipe. He pulls out a baggie, packing a little into his pipe. With the same matches, he lights up, taking a long drag. The sweet smell makes me jealous. I’ve live with him for three years almost now, never have I smoked a bowl with him. Can’t. Drug tests at work and all. I feel like a square. I finish my beer, grab another.

The fire’s out. We walk over to see the carnage.

The ants are already busy. Rebuilding their civilization. A few yards away, it appears a new mound is in the works.

“They’re plotting their attack,” I say. “That’s the corner where we usually pee during parties.”

“Smart fuckers, they are,” Kurtis says, lighting up one more time. “Well, I’m fucking hot. Let’s go inside.”

“It’s just as fucking hot in there,” I say. “Turn on the swamp cooler. At least we can sit out here and get misted on.”

I stare at the cone graveyard. City of Phoenix. City of Glendale. City of Tempe. Maricopa County. City of Mesa. City of Chandler.

“We don’t have a Guadalupe yet,” I say.

“Tonight, we will,” Kurt says with flick of his lighter.