Little Ocmulgee State Park

 

I’ve  got a dozen new tiny holes in the bottom of my tent thanks to an assault of a Napoleonesque army of ants.  They were more relentless than the scissor ants of Brazil that left gaping holes in my tent, as these got into everything, even attracted by the scent of the strong detergent a pair of shorts I just bought at a resale shop had been washed in.  The shorts were deep in a pannier.  When I pulled them out, along with everything else in the pannier to rid it of the invasion of ants, an entire battalion or two of ants clung to every inch of its fabric.

I was awoken by the ants at midnight when I could feel something nipping me.  I saw they were everywhere and in everything.  I emptied the tent of all its contents except my sleeping bag and water bottle and what passes as a pillow.  I then smashed every ant remaining, mostly of the micro size, some so small they were barely visible. Then it was back to sleep.  Two hours later I awoke again to some more nipping and discovered more swarms of ants all over.  

Since there was no defeating them, I took down the tent and moved it from the forest to a nearby clearing where two trailers for 18-wheelers had been abandoned. It was well from the road, on the other side of some train tracks I had to lift my bike over to reach, so I was still well secluded. I was quickly back to sleep, but then awoke again at 3:30 by more of the same ants.  I had earlier seen their main entry point at a seam in the corner of the tent.  I doused it with mosquito repellent, but they just chewed their way in through tiny holes all over.  In this corner of the tent the four pinpricks of white are some of their entry points.

These were a new breed of ant, maybe adapting to all the pesticides used on the nearby pecan orchards. Super ants created by pesticides had been the explanation for the voracity of the ants of Brazil, the most treacherous I’d ever encountered.  I’d never had an issue with ants in the US and rarely elsewhere, just once by quite vicious red ants in Laos and once in a peach orchard in France by ants that chewed their way into my tent.

There weren’t as many ants in this third wave, so I crushed them all and was able to sleep until it started getting light at 6:30 as a fourth wave of ants began to make their presence known.

After arising I spent half an hour making a thorough elimination of ants from my gear.  I discovered they had eaten their way into a pack of ramen.  Who would have thought ramen exuded an odor.  Me, as Janina’s cats have been known to rip into any stray bag of ramen they can get their paws on.  I discovered ants in the groove on the top of my peanut butter jar and also trying to get into a jar of honey-roasted peanuts. As I brushed them off clothes, some would cling to my hand and arm and leave a sting from their bites.  During the night when I took a swig of water from my water bottle, I discovered a few had lodged into the nozzle of the bottle and bit my lip and the inside of my mouth when I squeezed the water into my mouth. 

It wasn’t the best start of the day, though it got me going a little earlier than usual.  I had reason to celebrate though when, an hour down the road, I came upon the first open diner at the breakfast hour of the trip. Before I committed to it I asked if it served hot cakes and had WiFi and a booth with an eclectic outlet.  Yes on all counts.  All through the meal ants trickled out of my handlebar bag onto the table.

I had more good fortune further down the road when I came upon an Indian-run service station/convenience store that advertised “all fountain drinks 79 cents.”  While I sat drinking a 32-ouncer and eating the ramen I had removed several hundred ants from, a teen-aged girl stepped out of the passenger door of a car facing me and said she was going to buy me something.  I told her that wasn’t necessary,  but she was fulfilling an assignment from her mother sitting behind the steering wheel.  She came back with a cold bottle of orange juice and a bag of chips.  

That was the first act of generosity in six days in Georgia, other than the Gatorade and water I was given as I repaired a flat tire along the highway through Fort Benning.  Georgia was way behind Mississippi and Alabama.  But it was fast catching up when a husky young man got out of his pickup truck and asked, “Do you travel much?”  

I told him “a bit.”  Before I could elaborate, he handed me a wad of bills and said “put this in your pocket.”  It was eight singles, just what I need for my daily drinks, sparing stores from having to break larger bills.  Once when all I had was a ten for a cup of ice, the cashier told me I could have it for free.  The only change I had was a nickel, so I left that in the penny tray.

The Jefferson Davis Highway took me to Fitzgerald and it’s Carnegie Library on Lee Street.  It was now the Carnegie Center with Carnegie Library still over both its front and side entries.  The gallery on its first floor can be rented to host events, as has been the case in several of Georgia’s old Carnegies.  The second floor has been given over to office  space and classrooms in this still vital buildings dating to 1915.

As striking as the library and contrary to the roads named for preeminent Confederates was a mural in a courtyard behind the library.

I took a partial rest day on Memorial Day at Little Ocmulgee State Park sitting in the shade at a picnic table besides a lake reading “Doctor Pascal,” the twentieth and final volume of Zola’s Rougan-Macquort series on my iPad thanks to the Gutenberg Project. Reading the series was one of my pandemic endeavors.  It had been a long slog reading these novels mostly of despair and misery about an extended family’s struggles in 1860s France.  One of the highlights though of immersing myself in Zola was discovering the Warner Brothers film “The Life of Zola” that won the best picture Oscar in 1937.

Though it was relatively cool in the shade I took a periodic dip in the 256-acre lake at its lone beach by a dam constructed in 1938 by the Civilian Conservation Corps.  Signs warned of alligators, though fellow swimmers said they are usually only seen early or late in the day, also when the fishing is best.  I had the lone picnic table in the shade. After a couple of hours a family asked if they could share it.  They came with a passel of kids all under ten who went charging into the water shouting, “Let’s play.”  They tried to entice their mother in but she said, “I’m not ready to get wet.  I’m going to wait until tomorrow.”

She and her husband loaded the table with food and drink.  They took advantage of a nearby barbecue to cook up a couple plates of hot dogs and sausages, which they shared, though not their cooler of beer.  

They had yet to be vaccinated. “We’ve got lots of kin who have,” the wife said.  “We’re still considering it.”  There’d been few cases of the virus in their small county, so they didn’t feel vulnerable.   They weren’t inquisitive at all about me, probably never encountering a white man traveling by bike, and didn’t know where to begin.  I might have camped at the park, but it was easier to bike down the road to a forest I could have all to myself and not to have to fill out some paperwork and fork over $25.

No ants came visiting through the forest bed of thick pine needles.  The forest was so quiet I slept eleven hours, making up for my disjointed sleep of the night before.