Largest Yellowjacket Nest?

Saw on NBC tonight about what may be the largest yellowjacket nest ever, discovered under a home in Winter Haven, FL. Says here:

Ruthie Smarte's son first noticed the nest behind her Winter Haven home in March. At the time, it seemed small and nonthreatening, so they thought little of it.

But two of Smarte's cats eventually became apparent victims of the insects as the nest kept growing and growing, and the family realized they needed to do something.

"This thing got big real quick," said Fred Smarte, who worried the bugs could get into the house and attack his mother.

Exterminators from Florida Pest Control arrived at the house Friday to find a nest they said was the largest ever found at a home in the company's 65-year history. It contained between 15,000 and 35,000 yellow jackets and stretched from the crawl space beneath the house outside, where it was fused with an old armchair.

I've been noticing a lot of yellowjackets around here at my current location in sunny Gulfport, and now am doubly watchful for signs of such an infestation. I'm pretty sure the underside of my house and yard is completely owned by Big-headed ants, though.

Big-Headed Ants

So this morning, I spied a lone teensy-tiny ant wandering around on my windowsill. As an experiment, in the name of science and all its wonders, I placed a small piece of shredded wet cat food - about the size of my pinky nail - on the windowsill. And watched. And waited.

At first, the ant didn't seem at all interested. He walked right past it a couple times in his meandering path. But then a second ant arrived, and inspected it closely. Then he walked away from it for some distance, went to the end of the sill and did something quite odd - he reared up on his hind legs like a meerkat with his forelegs wriggling. Though what I don't know about ants you could almost fit into the Superdome, I began to suspect he was calling, somehow, on his secret nanoscopic two-way ant radio for backup.

That second ant returned to the piece of cat food and began chowing down, accompanied now by the first one. Apparently Ant #2 was a bit smarter than Ant #1 and had to explain to him, "See, this is food. Get all you can carry and start packing." And shortly, hordes more ants, seemingly having received Ant #2's telepathic text message, arrived in droves and set about dismantling the tiny chunk of turkey. (Unfortunately the photo above is the best I can do with my primitive old flipphone's camera.) I noticed that a few of them looked different than the others; they had impossibly enormous heads with jaws so large they were visible to the naked eye.

A quick consultation of the interwebs revealed they're called - yes - Big Headed Ants, aka Pheidole megacephala . Though they do not sting and they rarely bite, they are considered one of the worst invasive species ever, especially in Florida. They tend to drive out all other species of ants in any given area - even fire ants - and gobble up native species of plants, which in turn opens the door to invasive plants. They have a winged version of themselves during mating season that resembles a termite, and they leave debris-covered foraging tubes in much the same manner of termites. Because of this, many a naive homeowner has been duped into getting their property chemically treated by termite companies of either an unscrupulous or imbecilic nature.

Most Big Headed Ants don't have the big heads - it's only the soldiers among them. There were at least three supervising the cat food harvest on my windowsill as the minions toiled.

I take a pretty laissez-faire attitude to invasive species - and life in general, for that matter - and am inclined to not interfere with the local ants who were here before me. Then again, according to this site: "This ant is known to chew on irrigation, telephone cabling and electrical wires." Uh-oh.

Black Juvenile Lubber

When I saw this extremely large black grasshopper with yellow stripes in my yard, I thought I'd discovered yet another unusual transplanted beastie like the Giant Lubber. But as it turns out, this actually is a Lubber - this is what they look like when they're juvenile, and they eventually grow into a full yellow carapace as they mature and grow to insane lengths and eat everything in your yard.

Florida's Giant Grasshoppers

If the softball-sized snails didn't freak you out, try this on for size: I walked out my front door today to find this giant orange-yellow-and-red monstrosity perched in a tree. We've got some mighty big grasshoppers back home in Kentucky but not like this.

Turns out it's called a Lubber, and it's actually quite common throughout the state of Florida and Georgia as well. According to Wild Florida:

This giant, slow moving grasshopper’s bright orange, yellow and red colors are a warning that it contains toxins and will make any potential predator sick. If for any reason, you fail to heed the color warning and pick it up, the grasshopper makes a loud hissing noise and secretes an irritating foul-smelling foamy spray.

These 4-inch grasshoppers are too large and toxic for most natural predators, so they don’t need to move fast. Lubbers cannot fly far, and travel in short clumsy hops, or walk and crawl slowly through the vegetation. They feed on broadleaf plants and can become a nuisance when swarms invade residential areas and feast on garden plants. Lubbers seem to be unaffected by most insecticides.

They say 4-inch, but this one was definitely a five-incher; I used a CD jewel case to measure it. And though people in residential areas are often urged to destroy the critters whenever possible because of their very active plant-munching habits, I just gave him some spare change and he went on his way.

(By the way, in Africa some species of grasshopper get as big as cats.)