Every house in Laos has its special wildlife. We've had giant tarantulas, hoards o' roaches, snakes, rats, and ANTS.
"Come on, get real," you might be thinking, "Really, you are going to include ants in that list?" Yes.
We get small red fire ants, speedy small black ants, large lumbering red-black ants, and many variations in between. Perhaps the most feared is the giant black ant. A single bite from this ant can drop a grown man to the ground. It is feared, it resists poison, it is the rambo ant.
The large, fast, red ant likes to bite. When it does it is painful. It hunts in groups and has several hunting strategies. Once, we came upon a whole dog that was being eaten by the large, fast, red ant army. This week, our ant battles took us to the large, fast, red ant fortress. We won the battle, but the war is far from over.
In this picture, there are at least 4 large, fast, red ant nests. Each nest is as large as, or larger than, my head.
The nests consist of tree leaves folded (the ants do this) and some secretion to cement the leaves together.
Inside the nest are thousands of ants and many ant eggs. These nests are often protected and harvested as the eggs are known to be quite tasty in scrambled eggs or various other delicacies.
"This war ant over yet!"
The above nest split open. Zoom in to see the white eggs.
