All of my work was close to the ground which was fine with me, but I didn't realize there was a hidden threat. As I cleaned my third bunker, I started getting some stinging around my right wrist. I thought it was just irritation from sand in the cuff of my glove, but as I rolled my cuff down to brush it out, I realized that my cuff was full of tiny ants that were biting me. The ants were no more than a millimeter long. They were tiny.
The maintenance crew that we were working with said that they were fire ants and that they are pretty common in Arizona. I swept them all away and really didn't think any more of it.
When we got home, Steve realized he had an ant in his pants. He whipped his pants off quickly and got the little pest out of there. It stung him about 5 times up and down his leg.
My wrist was still stinging and starting to itch, so I took a look at it and realized that my arm was starting to swell. So we got online and did some research on fire ants. Our research said that if you are allergic to them, you could have a severe reaction fairly quickly, or you might get a large local reaction, which isn't as serious, but can be pretty uncomfortable. So I took their advice and started taking Benedryl and icing my arm once an hour for 20 minutes. It also said to keep antibiotic cream on the actual bites to keep them from getting infected.
I had about a dozen bites around my wrist. We can't show you Steve's bites. 😉
I kind of liked that all my veins disappeared, but it wasn't very comfortable.
The swelling kept working its way up my arm and down toward my fingers.
We finally switched to ice baths for my arm instead of just ice packs. It took a couple of days, but the swelling is finally going back down. The Benedryl made me really out of it, so I was extremely happy when I could stop taking it. Another couple of days and I should be back to normal.
We now know what fire ants are, and we'll do our best to keep our distance.
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