10 Tahoe Trap (35 page)

I pulled on gloves, and we started picking.

“Don’t rub your eyes,” Paco said.

“Got it,” I said.

“And don’t, you know...”

“Don’t what?” I said.

Paco looked down, embarrassed.

“What, Paco?”

“If you have to pee, you can’t touch yourself with your gloves. Otherwise, you’ll be doing the hot chili dance.” He looked up at me. “It really burns,” he said, almost pleading.

“Lesson received,” I said.

Ten minutes later, we’d filled two garbage bags. They were heavy enough that I worried that they would rip apart. I cradled the bottoms as I carried them back to the Jeep. We put our pepper gloves in the Jeep.

“Ready for ants?” I said.

Paco nodded.

I grabbed my other gloves, my jumpsuit, goggles and other gear, picked up the two customized paint buckets and said, “We’ll follow you.”

I held onto Spot’s collar. I didn’t want him running into a fire ant nest.

This time Paco went behind the hothouse and walked toward the far corner. Then he turned and walked diagonally away from the building. He moved slower with each step, eventually stopping and staring out toward the field.

Paco took very slow tip-toe steps as if he were sneaking up on a sleeping tiger.

After three steps, he turned and came back to me.

“Right out there,” he said pointing.

I wasn’t sure, but I thought his voice had a touch of tremolo in it.

“Okay, you hold Spot’s collar while I suit up. Don’t let go of him.”

Paco took Spot’s collar, nodding.

“Spot, you stay with Paco. You understand?” I said. I knew that the words were pointless, but I hoped that my tone would give Spot a sense that he should not run.

I pulled on my jumpsuit, stepped each foot into a plastic bag and taped it up around my pant legs. I tore a small opening in another bag and pulled the bag over my head, positioning the opening around my eyes. I taped that bag around my shoulders and chest and had Paco add tape where the plastic came down my back. I tore a smaller opening at my mouth, stretched a dust mask over my head, and taped the edges of the mask to the plastic bag on my head.

My swim goggles covered my eyes. I taped them in place.

Last, I put bags over my gloves and had Paco tape the edges around my sleeves.

“Do I look like the creature from the black lagoon?” I said through the dust mask.

Paco stared at me just as he would if he saw me playing the monster in the movie he’d never heard of. But he didn’t react.

“Remember not to let go of this hound’s collar?”

He nodded.

“I don’t know how long this is going to take me, so be patient. And even if I slip and fall, don’t decide to come and help me, okay?”

He nodded again.

I picked up the buckets and lids and shovel, and turned and walked toward where Paco had pointed.

The first nest didn’t look like much as I approached. Just a mound of dirt with a reddish coating. But when I got closer, the mound seemed much bigger, maybe 12 inches high, and the reddish coating turned out to be swarming ants.

Street was right. These ants were crazed with frantic movement. These were ants on steroids. They all seemed to be in a mad rush, racing around and over each other and in and out of many tunnels leading into the dirt mound.

I set the buckets down nearby, checked that the funnel was still properly positioned in the first one, and got my shovel ready. Nothing I could possibly do with the shovel could accelerate their already-panicked movement.

I was wrong.

I plunged the shovel into the soft ground, levered it, and tried to raise up a pile of ants and dirt. I wanted to lift it up and dump it into the bucket funnel in one smooth movement. But I jerked, and the shovel came free in a jerk. The pile of ants and dirt flipped up into the air and showered down on me.

My goggles allowed for only limited vision. I had to point my head at something to see it. I bent my neck and looked down at my jumpsuit. What I saw was no big deal, probably fewer than a hundred ants racing over the fabric. But their intensity was disturbing.

I looked back down at the nest. The pheromones were obviously working. The ants had exploded in movement. If any of them had gone into safety mode and retreated underground, I would never know. All I saw were thousands of ants moving at a sprint. They came up my shovel, swarmed over my plastic baggie-booties and up my pant legs. I remembered what Paco had said. Fire ants can chew through anything. My skin was already twitching in anticipation of the coming assault.

I ignored that thought and began shoveling.

I got a scoop of ants and dirt into the funnel. Then another.

I’d barely gotten any down the funnel, and already ants were rushing back out.

I kept shoveling. Ants were rushing out of the nest. It was like watching the world’s biggest army sprinting toward a naive and ill-equipped invader. There were so many that the hundreds, or thousands, of ants already crawling up me seemed like a minor event. But when I again looked down at my legs, it was frightening to see the hoards preparing to breach my jumpsuit fabric, ready to plunge on through the openings they were no doubt chewing, and devour me.

I tried to brush some of them off, then stuck the shovel back into the earth, and dumped another scoopful into the funnel. It looked like it was all dirt and no ants. Yet ants kept crawling back out of the funnel. I stopped thinking about the proportion of dirt to ants. Either I’d get a bunch of ants or not.

I felt the first sting on my back. There wasn’t even any opening in the back of the jumpsuit. So either they’d chewed through, or they could sting through the fabric. I hadn’t thought about that.

Another sting on my back. Then a sting on my right thigh.

I shoveled faster. Ants and dirt flew.

Somebody shoved a burning needle into the top of my leg at the underwear line. The ants were going to get me where it would really hurt.

I took a moment and rubbed the fabric over the sting, back and forth hard. The ant or ants were inside my pants, but maybe I could squish them from the outside.

I kept shoveling dirt into the funnel.

The next time I dug the shovel into the ground, I hit the mother lode. My shovel plunged into a soft spot, and when I brought it up, it was as if I had scooped into solid ants and no dirt.

I was ecstatic even as I was repulsed. The shovel was alive, a softball-sized scoop of solid, swarming, angry ants. I plopped them down the funnel and went back for more.

Another sting burned into my neck near my adam’s apple. I ignored it. And dug another, even larger, scoop of raging ants.

Two more stings as I dumped the ants into the funnel. Hot needles in my stomach and butt. The ants had put out the word that they didn’t need to get inside my suit. Just fire their poison darts through the fabric. Another sting higher up on my groin. I started doing a dance of sorts. Jumping up and down, trying to shake off the ants.

Kept shoveling. Dumped them into the funnel. Jumped up and landed hard to jerk the ants off me. Shoveled again. Jumped and landed.

The bucket was nearly full. Mostly dirt. But a lot of ants.

I dropped the shovel. Picked up the bucket and banged it on the ground to shake the ants off the funnel and down into their new, temporary home.

I peeled off the duct tape that held the funnel in place, and pulled it out of the smokestack vent pipe that protruded from the bucket lid. Ants swarmed up my arms. I wrapped pieces of screen over the vent pipe opening and taped it in place. Then I put the funnel into the second bucket and continued shoveling.

The ants were endless. The stings more frequent.

A hot needle stabbed me in the side of the neck, just below my ear. I swatted at the pain. Ants flew off my plastic-bag mitt and landed on my goggles. I saw them crawl across my field of vision. But I didn’t care. I had my treasure, and I was still alive.

I continued shoveling until the second bucket was full, and I repeated my process of removing the funnel and taping screen over the pipe opening.

I held up the buckets to see if the little window screens were succeeding at keeping the ants inside. Ants swarmed over the outside of the buckets, but it seemed that none of them was emerging through the screens.

I took the shovel and buckets and ran away from the nest. Stopped and banged the bucket and shovel on the ground to try to leave excess ants behind.

Another hot needle into the back of the knee. It was the worst sting, yet. Like a soldering iron going through the skin into the joint itself. I grabbed at the area and rubbed it. The pain intensified. Maybe I’d gotten a bunch of stings at once. I bent the leg, straightened the leg, shook the leg. It felt like I had a wound into which someone had poured boiling sulfuric acid. I’d have to have the leg amputated at the nearest clinic. No time to even go to the city hospital.

I did some vigorous jumping jacks, then sprinted down the plant rows, away from Paco and Spot.

It was a mistake. Spot got excited and pulled free from Paco.

When I saw him come running, I set the buckets down, then dove onto the ground and rolled over to try to rub off ants.

Just as fast, I was back on my feet and running farther away when Spot caught up to me.

He jumped onto me in play as I knew he would. I only hoped that the ants were mostly gone so that he wouldn’t be attacked.

I began jerking off my wraps. Plastic bags and duct tape, goggles and jumpsuit.

Eventually, I was down to my ordinary clothes, my other gear scattered among the plants.

Spot had that demonic look I’d come to know well. He stood with his body lowered a bit, front legs splayed out, watching me, wagging. He was waiting for my first hint of movement so that he could anticipate which way I was about to run. Then he’d launch himself onto me, knock me down so that we could roll in the dirt and get seriously muddy.

Spot suddenly lowered his head and began chewing at his right front paw. Then he bit at the outside of his elbow.

“Sorry, dude. Collateral damage from hanging around me.” I reached down and rubbed his foot, then saw two crazed ants running up his leg. I wiped all his legs down.

“Let’s move, largeness. We’ll do the wrestling match later. We have an ant assault to plan and execute.”

I pulled an unused garbage bag from my pocket and bagged up the jumpsuit and my torn bags and tape.

Now largely ant free, I called out to Paco as we walked back toward the hothouse.

“Mission accomplished,” I said. “We’ve got a lot of ants.”

Paco stared at the buckets as I approached, his trepidation obvious. Behind the little screen windows, ants swarmed. When I got close, he stepped away. He couldn’t have had a more dramatic reaction if I were carrying a bucket of rattle snakes.

At the Jeep, I took two of the extra large lawn-and-leaf bags and set the buckets inside of them. I figured that if I enclosed enough air with the buckets, the ants wouldn’t suffocate during the ride back to Tahoe. If any ants got out through the screen-covered bucket windows, the bags would help contain them. I was scratching at my stings as I put the bagged buckets into the Jeep.

By the time we were all loaded into the Jeep, we hadn’t seen a loose fire ant in thirty seconds or so.

“You get stung?” Paco asked as we drove out the long dirt road.

“Me. Not at all. Did you?”

“No.” Paco said. Gradually he relaxed as we headed back up into the Sierra.

FORTY

Back in Tahoe, we drove over to the Harrah’s parking lot and transferred our precious weaponry into the back of Diamond’s old pickup. As Spot and Paco once again squeezed into the front, I hoped that Salt and Pepper hadn’t seen us drive the Jeep into the basin and followed us to Harrah’s.

I drove over Kingsbury Grade and down to Carson Valley, watching the rear view mirror the entire time. I saw no blue pickups. But that was no guarantee that we were safe.

Before we drove to Diamond’s house, we went back to the hardware store and got a few sundries we’d forgotten including two electric leaf blowers that claimed to produce 240 mile-per-hour air streams.

Back at Diamond’s I called Street.

“We’ve got ants and peppers,” I said.

“And you’re still alive,” she said. “Always a good sign.”

“Now we want to brew up some pepper spray, and I wondered if you could give me some tips.”

“I study bugs, remember? What would I know about pepper spray?”

“I don’t know. But you’re a scientist and a smart person. I wouldn’t know how to begin. You might. Got any helpful ideas?”

“Well, all I know about peppers is that the hot ones, the chili peppers, all have a chemical called ‘capsaysen.’ It’s spelled C-A-P-S-A-I-C-I-N.”

“Paco made sure we were well protected when we worked around them,” I said. “Even so, just having them close makes your eyes and nose sting. Quite amazing to think that a plant can be so potent.”