Those Little Red Bastards

I think I got bit by a fire ant yesterday morning. When I woke up and started walking around, my right foot felt a bit "tight" around the ankle. Right now, I have this impulse to take a potato peeler and just "have at it" with my foot. I can barely see the bone from my ankle. I've taken Benadryl and Advil, and put a corticosteroid cream on the area. (Heaven help me - that potato peeler is really feeling quite tempting right now.) The antihistamine effect of Benadryl is only one of the reasons why I took it. I'm also hoping that it will knock me out because there is no way I will fall asleep with this torture.

Which reminds me - sometime last year I had another run-in with those LRBs. I remember waking up in the middle of the night scratching my right butt cheek like crazy. I got up and went to the bathroom to see what the heck it was, and I saw that I had about three or four big round patches on my butt and lower back. When I returned to my room I saw three dead fire ants on my bed. Now, how those three LRBs found their way into my drawers, I will never know. But boy! If there were people who saw me within the next few days after that, they would have definitely been wondering about the hygiene habits of the nurse who was always scratching her butt.

How do you treat fire ant bites? Read this. Or this, for something a little less in-depth.