After seeing a good portion of Florida we're steadily making our way North! We decided to head to the Ocala National Forest to hang out for a few days before shooting up to Jacksonville. The next 3 to 4 days were supposed to be really cold, so we thought it would be good to stay in the warm areas till it heats up again.
Ocala looks very similar to Appalachicola, which is on a similar latitude on the West side of the state. Pines, white sand, and saw palmetto make up the majority of the landscape. We drove down a sand road that bordered a square of clear cut land and parked underneath the shade of the trees just as the sun went down.
By the time we had finished making dinner and cleaning up it was pitch black outside, and beautifully quiet. The only sounds we could hear were crickets, and even they seemed to be making an effort to provide soothing ambiance.
Dave had just stepped outside to hook up the generator when I saw his flashlight beam freeze and heard a startled “Whoa!”. I immediately sat bolt upright and asked what he had seen. There was a pause and then a very unconvincing “Nothing....” After scanning the ground with his flashlight beam for quite a while he stepped back into the van with a wide eyed, uneasy look. After a lot of prying I finally got out of him what he'd seen out there: spiders. My least favorite animal in all of God's creation. Apparently he had caught small bits of reflected light in the flash beam that turned out to be light shining back from their eight beady little eyes. I scoffed disbelievingly, as it seemed a bit far fetched. Ever so cautiously I leaned out the door of the van and scanned the area around us with the light. Evenly spaced, about every 8 feet, were a couple little pinpoints of light shining back, like dewdrops catching the sun. I relaxed, relieved that they must be exactly that, and just as turned to laugh at Dave...one moved. I nearly jumped out of my skin and let out a startled yelp. Gripping the light with both hands I wielded it like a police beam, and sure enough, there were the hideous reflecting eyes of a hundred ground spiders winking back at me.
Needless to say, sleep was a little slow in coming that night.
The next day we woke up and went about our business outside. Luckily our eight legged infestation vanished in the daylight, probably sleeping off a hard night of spider partying and crawling all over innocent people's faces. I took a walk to take in the peaceful natural settings and explore. I came back and sat in the van with Dave when suddenly Jax hopped up into the van with a pitiful yelp, shaking his back foot. We immediately grabbed it to take a look and saw four or five large red ants with huge pinschers clamped onto his foot, stinging him aggressively all the while. We cleaned them off and gave him some Benadryl to soothe the pain. These must have hurt much more than the small red fire ants he encountered before, because he sat grimacing in pain and licking at the area for quite a while. We looked them up and they appear to have been Imported Red Fire Ants, a larger and much more aggressive species. They're about 1/4" long and mean as Hell. We weren't able to get a good picture, so I borrowed this one from Google:
Thoroughly miffed by the insect population at this point, we started to make lunch. Some movement caught my eye and I noticed a little ladybug waddling across the window outside. “Awww” I said, smiling “I like ladybugs! They're the only insect I don't mind!” Little did I know exactly what was to follow.
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| So cute, so innocent. |
We had just left for a short walk down the road when I heard a zipping sound and felt a light impact. I looked down and there was a ladybug on my leg! I smiled graciously, and carefully removed him. Suddenly there was another zip and impact, then another and another. We both started hopping around and swatting as a cloud of ladybugs began to form in the sky like adorable little locusts. We hightailed it back to the van, which had in the meantime had become coated in hundreds of ladybugs. We sat inside safely (or so we thought) and watched them swarm the outside. We both laughed in disbelief at the strange sight and wondered how long they would stay.
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| Just the beginning.... |
That's when things got serious... The little bugs found that they just barely could fit through the crack where the windows seat and began pouring inside in tens and twenties. I screamed like a little girl and began trapping them in cups and throwing them outside while Dave laughed at my antics. As fast as I chucked them out, they came crawling back in. I glared at him in a frazzled manor and said “We are MOVING.” He obligingly agreed and went out to secure the generator, which by now was absolutely covered in bugs. Now it was my turn to stifle giggles as they crawled all over his arms, hair, and back. I was supremely glad to be a woman about then, as bug-swarm recovery tactics fall strictly into the man's list of duties. He jumped into the driver's seat, still shaking off clinging bugs, and we got out of there as fast as we could. For the five miles to the exit of the forest the air was thick with flying ladybugs, dotting the windshield and clinging to the windows like zombies in a horror flick. “Let me innnnn!” they seemed to cry in tiny voices. “Love meeee!”
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| Waiting...watching...lurking in the shadows. |
It's been three days and I'm still picking the odd straggler out of our laundry and bedding. And that's how we got kicked out of our campsite by ladybugs.
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