Ant Invasion

They are here. They are plentiful. They want your plants and your electronics. They laugh at your can of Raid. That's right, our ant overlords are on the march:

In what sounds like a really low-budget horror film, voracious 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.

"They're itty-bitty things about the size of fleas, and they're just running everywhere," said Patsy Morphew of Pearland, who is constantly sweeping them off her patio and scooping them out of her pool by the cupful. "There's just thousands and thousands of them. If you've seen a car racing, that's how they are. They're going fast, fast, fast. They're crazy."

The ants -- formally known as "paratrenicha species near pubens" -- have spread to five Houston-area counties since they were first spotted in Texas in 2002.

The newly recognized species is believed to have arrived in a cargo shipment through the port of Houston. Scientists are not sure exactly where the ants came from, but their cousins, commonly called crazy ants, are found in the Southeast and the Caribbean.

Anyone who either has a yard or who has done yard work in Texas has had to deal with fire ants. Interestingly enough, fire ants arrived in Texas via the same method (seaborne transport) that got these little pests to our shores. There's also strong evidence in support of certain types of mosquitoes making their appearance in North America thanks to ocean transport.