Half-Naked Ant-ics

/ Diane Henders

Well, Mom’s admonition to ‘always wear nice underwear, just in case’ has proved (once again) to be good advice.

I used to think it was just silly. Seriously, Mom: What could possibly make me strip off my clothes in public?

(The Fates let out an evil chuckle.)

So.

There I was, out in our front yard on a sunny day, minding my own business. As usual, I was togged out in more clothes than most people wear on an Arctic expedition: Jeans, T-shirt with a long-sleeved shirt open over it, steel-toed work boots, knee pads, work gloves, sunglasses, a broad-brimmed hat, and enough sunscreen to kill a dozen coral reefs. (Note: We don’t have coral reefs in our front yard. No coral reefs were harmed in the making of this blog post.)

I was working on a rotten log, tearing handfuls of squishy wood into the rich mulch that our rhododendrons love. Trying to appease my cranky lumbar vertebrae, I sat on another fallen log.

Anybody who’s spent time around rotten logs can probably see what’s coming; but in my defense, I’ve done this loads of times all over our property and I’ve never had a problem before. But this time, I felt a painful little pinch. In… my armpit?!?

“Okay,” thought I. “Maybe it’s a bit of heat rash, or an errant hair follicle.” I scratched the spot and carried on.

But then there were more pinches. Armpit, shoulder. What the…?

You guessed it: There was an ant colony in my log seat. And a bunch of big black-and-red ants had climbed up the back of my jeans, under the loose long-sleeved shirt, and chowed down on the tender armpit exposed by my short-sleeved T-shirt.

Let’s just say I moved, um… briskly. I yanked off my overshirt, but by then the ants had found their way through my T-shirt arms and down inside my jeans.

So, yeah. I did an extremely graceless striptease in our front yard. The exhibition was made even more alluring by the fact that I couldn’t take off my jeans without first removing my bulky boots, which have long laces that require some effort to pull loose.

So there I was: Head down, ass up, hopping around and whacking at random parts of my half-naked body. The sun’s reflection off all that pasty skin could probably be seen from outer space. (And if that didn’t warn any passing aliens to avoid Earth, nothing will.)

But I guess it could have been worse. At least the neighbours can’t see into our yard, and no cars drove by. (As far as I know.) And I was actually wearing nice underwear, Mom.

Please tell me I’m not the only one who’s flung off my clothes in public…

Book 17 update: My optimistic plan to finish the draft last week was scuttled when I had a reaction to a prescription painkiller and ended up in Urgent Care for a day, then spent the week stoned brainless on heavy-duty antihistamines. Fingers crossed for this week…

35 thoughts on “Half-Naked Ant-ics”

  1. Being staked out on an anthill is a slow way to die. I do not blame you for the striptease. I am sure if it had been by a highway you would have still gone for it. Modesty is highly over rated. the tall boots must have been the worst of the undress ritual.
    By the way, have you tried pole dancing. You might have a winning combination there?

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  2. Your response seems reasonable and sane to me! I had a similar experience. Join these concepts — driving on the highway, loose fitting jeans, sensation of something crawling ever so slowly, little by little, up your leg. I stopped the care and leapt out and yanked them down. Quite a response from passing motorists. The worst of it was that I never found the spider, or whatever it was.

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    • Argh! There’s nothing worse than having that sensation and NOT being able to find the culprit. I’m laughing as I imagine you mooning the passing motorists, though! Dignity is overrated, right? 😉

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  3. oh Diane you make me laugh so hard. perhaps you can contact the space station to see if they have any footage of an unusual white spot on their video. Now I wonder what the ants might have to say about the swatting saga?

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  4. That must have been quite the dance!

    Well you know me, Id never take my clothes off publicly unless someone dared me to. And so far the thought of seeing me in my skivvies has prevented every person I know from uttering the words.

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  5. I couldn’t stop laughing…..the whole thing has left me speechless. I wasn’t prepared for the collapsing log leading to an ant attack. On the up side….at least you were wearing underwear…..nice ones or not!! As close as I’ve ever gotten to your situation was years ago when we lived in Denver. We had a large pool in our backyard (couldn’t be seen by neighbors) and I’ll just leave it there….have a great week!!

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  6. I don’t normally strip off in public places, but my wife has had me take off my dust shirt before coming into the house after a long session at the table saw. Sadly it was all about just keeping dust out of the house.

    I’ve heard of ants in your pants, but never heard of anyone who actually had ants in their pants. Hopefully any passing aliens didn’t get any videos of the activity. That would really confuse them.

    about nice underwear – yes, wear them. I’ve had just enough unplanned trips to the emergency room to certify, that yes they are needed to have on at all times because you just never know.

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  7. Diane, I am so sorry that happened to you!
    I must say that I have (to a lesser extent) been there. I was driving along on a warm summer day ( no a/c in my Corolla) with my window down and my arm hanging out and I thought I felt something blow up my short sleeve.
    I pulled over safely into a gas station and checked. Nothing. Must have just bounced off, I thought. Well, as long as I was here, I may as well buy a cold drink.
    I was standing in line to pay for my fountain soda,when the wasp that was in my shirt started stinging me. I swatted at where I thought it was and REALLY p’d it off! I am not ashamed to say that I whipped that shirt over my head in totsl public (my underwear covered as much as some people’s beachwear) and killed that sucker!

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    • Oh, yikes! I’m shuddering at your story! Ant bites are barely love-nibbles compared to wasp stings. The hairs on the back of my neck are standing up at the thought of having a wasp in my shirt.

      But hooray for you for dealing with the issue head-on and proud! You’ve completely solved the “nice underwear” conundrum for me. My new maxim is “Always wear underwear that looks like a bikini”. That way I can strip wherever, whenever; and if anybody gives me grief I can just sniff and say, “What, you’ve never been to the beach?” 😉

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  8. Haha. This stuff only happens in my dreams. So far. What a picture, Diane. So, nobody saw you (except the ants)? That would have made the story even more hilarious. Maybe you can add that in? 🙂 How did you manage to remove all the nasty ants from your clothing? I’d be worried about that. We don’t have a washing machine at our disposal, usually.

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      • Thanks! I am feeling better — only a slight antihistamine hangover now.

        Fortunately, the ants were big and easy to spot. I inspected my clothes very thoroughly before I put them back on, so any neighbours/aliens/passersby would have gotten a good look at the *ahem* goods. No horns honked, though, and my neighbours haven’t been acting awkward, so I’m going to assume I got away with it. (I’ll have to take my chances with the aliens.)

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  9. Thankfully for those in my immediate vicinity, I have never flung off my clothes in public. I’ve had a wasp fly up my t-shirt (unknown to me) and sting me three times, but the subsequent de-shirting was done in the relative privacy of my own kitchen.

    My mother, though, at the ripe young age of around three years old, completely disrobed and sat outdoors on the curb in front of their house before my grandmother caught her and whisked her back indoors. Thankfully I did not inherit that gene, and even more thankfully, she did not choose to repeat this performance later in life.

    There was that time my pants split at work. And I don’t mean a small split. I think I had bent over and the pants ripped down the entire length of the leg. I lived only a few miles from the office at the time, so I had to do some creative work with clear packing tape in the bathroom in order to leave with some of my dignity intact and go home to change into something a bit more durable.

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    • Ha! There’s nothing worse than that loud, ominous R-I-I-I-P followed by a sensation of breezy freedom! My pants have never split along a seam, but my jeans have a distressing tendency to wear thin in the butt area. Then all it takes to separate the strained threads is an incautious stoop, and suddenly I’m feeling very cheeky.

      I’m laughing about your mom! I’ve never been a parent, but it seems to me that toddlers are pretty much guaranteed to humiliate their parents sooner or later. 😀

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      • Oh, it doesn’t seem to stop at the toddler years. I forgot another incident that my mom had. She and my uncles were out water skiing when they were teens. What they would do is sit on the dock as the boat started to take off, and they would follow on the water skis. Well, as luck would have it, a nail caught the rear of her swimsuit, and tore the rear out of it. And my grandfather was laughing…as he didn’t stop the boat to help restore anyone’s dignity! 🤣 So, anyone on that forgotten lake up north got a view of the full moon in broad daylight, it seems.

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        • Hahahaha!!! Your poor mother must have been mortified! That would be a hard enough blow to the dignity for even the most self-confident of adults, but a teen?!? Owie.

          I know how she felt, because a similar thing happened to me. Worse, it was self-inflicted. I guess some of us are just destined to suffer wardrobe malfunctions. 😉
          .

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          • That’s a good one! 😁 At worst, I’ve worn shorts that are too old and a seam has come apart or worn out…and luckily I have caught the malfunctions while indoors and not out in public. (They tend to be used as work shorts around the house.) Although my oldest was one who always tried to wear clothing she had long outgrown, and I remember once at a beach where she’d had a similar see-through issue with the rear of her swimsuit–not worn out, but just stretched way too much. That was a face palm moment for sure (and a rather quick exit thereafter)…and I made sure I hid that thing once it was safely at home in the laundry, along with other clothing she’d outgrown three or four years earlier.
            Our lessons learned here? “Don’t do crack!”

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  11. Ouch. Big ouch. Ant bites frequently bring me up in humungous welts. I would also have been doing a strip. Nothing alluring about it though – speed would have been my focus.
    As it was many years ago when I stripped off in a crowded common room at college. I had just made a cup of tea. A passerby bumped my elbow and I poured the entire cup (just boiled remember) into my crotch. I was stripping as I ran for the bathroom. I lost rather a lot of my pubic hair in that incident. And had a fine set of blisters too…

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  12. 🤣
    Oh, Diane! The title should’ve given me a clue, but didn’t. As I read along, I’d pictured the log you were sat on was rotten and it splintered beneath you, causing you to, erm, disrobe… but the ants make it all the more fun! 🤣 Maybe not for you at the time, however. 😂
    We have friendly ants here who don’t nip and pinch, so to me, this is an experience only you can have! 😅

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    • LOL! I knew it — some things can only happen in my world. A collapsing log would have made a good story, too; but fortunately it didn’t happen. I can only imagine how much worse the whole experience would have been if I’d been rolling around in the ants’ former hideaway!

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