First, the fire ants.....

When I left Yale, the emergency management team had a little going-away party for me and gave me a hurricane preparedness kit.  They wanted me to be ready for the new kind of emergencies I might face in the south. That self-charging weather radio with lights has certainly come in handy!  They put everything they could imagine in that kit, but they missed a few things.  For a true hurricane survival kit here, you need fire ant bait and bug spray.  

Fire ants abound down here. They are especially nasty pests, aptly named because their bites burn like fire and then blister up.  By continually disturbing their mounds, we generally keep them moved to the perimeter of the farm.  But when it rains and rains and rains, they move wherever there is higher ground.  They can form rafts and float through flood waters. 

And they are everywhere, in the water, in the yard, even indoors.  So even though I tried to be careful cleaning up the yard, my hands and ankles are blistered.  And even though I am an organic gardener, I went around Saturday putting out poison.  

First the first ants, now the mosquitos.  It is impossible to walk outside without getting bitten.  Bug spray is essential.  People trying to clean up will be faced with yet another challenge, not on the magnitude of the flooding but painful in its own way.  

It is hard to imagine the suffering: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.