I was visiting my Dad (NE Texas, over by Texarkana) in the summer of '95 and offered to get rid of some of those red ant hills at the edge of his back yard. He told me to leave his ants alone: all those Texas folks have decided to keep them. It seems that fire ants just love seed ticks, and have made them scarce in a land that used to be crawling with the dang things. This is just one of several secrets Texicans keep to themselves: and they're dang touchy about all of 'em!

Pickett