I stepped into an ant Hill on the golf course yesterday and got about 6-7 bites around one ankle. Not fire ants, just garden variety brown ants, and now my ankle is swollen like a sausage and itches like crazy!

The older I get, the more significant the reaction seems to be. I am so sick of the little bastards!

That sucks! Rub a liberal amount of vinegar on it, the acidic vinegar (any type but white stinks the least) counteracts the poison in the bites and will stop a lot of the itching.

The pharmacist recommended a tube of Benadryl ointment for me. It helped quite a bit.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
The pharmacist recommended a tube of Benadryl ointment for me. It helped quite a bit.

Benadryl is very good too. Vinegar ASAP (if possible) neutralizes the poison very fast, then followed by Benadryl is preferred by most paramedics, DR's.


I recently had a customer/owner step on a jellyfish and go into epileptic shock in Treasure Cay,Bahamas. The chief paramedic poured the vinegar on and administered Benadryl pills. But told me the acid in the vinegar neutralizes the poison almost instantly. The owner was so bad he was going in and out of consciousness, really strong stomach pains, we had to carry him back to the boat on a lounge chair.

quote:

Originally posted by jimmy123x


I recently had a customer/owner step on a jellyfish and go into epileptic shock in Treasure Cay,Bahamas.

Did you mean anaphylactic shock?

AKA....."little bastards".


Ric

Interesting, I always worked under the assumption that ant venom was a carboxylic acid derivative and applied ammonia to any bites (immediately) followed by a hydrocortisone cream.

I just read on a University of Florida Entymologist's website that for several types ants my assumption was true.

Fire ants apparently have a different type of venom which is basic rather than acidic and also include some weird proteins as well. That would explain why the vinegar treatment is effective.

Learn something new everyday. Thanks guys.

Ants inject Formica acid when they bite you, so you need a base to neutralize the acid, a old country doctor once told me if you can get to a base fast enough just apply it to the area. But if it has been a while you should scrub the area to break any blisters then apply your base (he recommended Clorox) it will burn like hell, but now you are not treating a insect bite, you are treating a chemical burn, rinse well then apply hydrocortisone to reduce the inflammation then after a bit apply a antibiotic ointment, oral Benadryl will help with any allergic reaction, from there the area should scab over.

Powdered meat tenderizer

I made the mistake of pulling off of a bike trail onto the grass during a bike ride while vacationing in Florida this week.

My usual ability to find trouble came through again as I stopped directly on a small fire ant nest.

I was stopped for literally 15 second when the hot wave of burning came over my feet. Fortunately I only suffered about 30 bites.

The chlorinated pool water seemed to neutralize the bites and eliminate the swelling.

Those things are no joke. We had a temporary construction site setup in Texas where we had just laid down a fresh layer of traffic bond over the whole site. The contactor tasked with wiring the temporary jobsite office trailer was sitting under the trailer on a 5 gallon bucket when he was attacked by thousands of ants. They went up his pant leg and covered his entire body before he even knew what happened. He was hospitalized and many of the bites around his waist turned into big nasty scars. He was in and out of the doctor for months afterwards with some of the bites taking a long time to heal.

Not sure if he had an alergic reaction or if it was just the large quantity of bites but it kicked his ass bad.

Vinegar or a paste made from powdered meat tenderizer followed by benadryl gel is our go to.

Our beach bag always had a bottle of adolph's meat tenderizer in it for jelly fish stings.

At least they weren't fire ants.

quote:

That sucks! Rub a liberal amount of vinegar on it, the acidic vinegar (any type but white stinks the least) counteracts the poison in the bites and will stop a lot of the itching.

Thanks for the tip. I got tagged yesterday by angry fire ants covering my hand. I got at least 7 bites and hit it immediately with vinegar. It really helped. In the past my hand would have swelled up and had pustules all over. Just some minor itching today.