lying for a living

Ants Invade Houston, Eat Computers.

[V]oracious swarming ants that apparently arrived in Texas aboard a cargo ship are invading homes and yards across the Houston area, shorting out electrical boxes and messing up computers.

The hairy, reddish-brown creatures are known as “crazy rasberry ants” — crazy, because they wander erratically instead of marching in regimented lines, and “rasberry” after Tom Rasberry, an exterminator who did battle against them early on.

“Worse, they, like some other species of ants, are attracted to electrical equipment, for reasons that are not well understood by scientists.”

They have ruined pumps at sewage pumping stations, fouled computers and at least one homeowner’s gas meter, and caused fire alarms to malfunction. They have been spotted at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and close to Hobby Airport, though they haven’t caused any major problems there yet.

Yet. But they’ve made it to the space center. I fully expect them to wreak vengeance on NASA for subjecting them to “horrible, horrible freedom!”

I’m going to be in Houston next month. I’ll definitely be backing up my entire hard drive before I go. And I’ll have my “Hail Ants” sign ready.

And do you have any idea how long I’ve been waiting to use that line in a post title?