Did I really ASK for fire ants? 

By Rebecca Whitecotton 

I offended the spirit of fire ants everywhere, and I have been schooled. 

Yesterday I posted a photo from a hike that warns of hazards in Louisiana: poison ivy, fire ants, alligators, wild hogs, and venomous cottonmouth snakes. I said I thought fire ants should be listed first, because in the four months we’ve lived here I have seen more fire ants than I have ever seen in my life. This seems to be the capitol of the fire ant universe. 

That said, I have been careful, and I haven’t really had any problems other than a stray bite here or there. But yesterday, I joked about the hazards of fire ants and I think the sprit of fire ants saw my post and said, “Oh, yeah? You wanna go?”

Today, the weather was glorious and I hopped on my bike to enjoy the sun. As I rode on a street that leads to a golf course, a tree in front of me let loose hundreds of leaves all at once. I screeched to a halt on the side of the road and grabbed my phone. I’ve been hoping to capture a video of leaves falling like this because leaves inspired an entry in my journal that might become a blog post. 

I took 25 seconds of video before my leg was on fire. I looked down, and I was standing in a massive fire ant hill. The army was covering my shoes and halfway up my legs, under my yoga pants and burrowing into my socks. Excuse me for not taking a picture before I threw my phone on the ground and frantically started swatting my legs. I whipped my shoes and socks off, and wanted to rip my pants off but knew that the men on the golf course driving range a few hundred feet away would question my sanity. 

Check out these ants. They were really not very happy with me for stepping on their house.  

Being the philosophical thinker that I am, I can’t help but see this as cause and effect on a deeper level. Sure, on the surface it’s just chance and carelessness, but I like to look for deeper meaning. I put a thought into the universe and it manifested in spectacular form the next day. I noticed the correlation easily because my leg was on fire, and the irony was not lost on me that I had been warned about it the day before. 

What happens when we put thoughts into the universe and those thoughts return to bring us what we fear or didn’t want? Do we say “See, I was right to be afraid of that?” Or “My thinking helped to bring this into my awareness.” Do we take responsibility for those things as easily as if we manifested a great parking space? 

Now that I’ve soothed my bites, I’ll use this experience as a reminder to choose my thoughts and words carefully and be aware of what they bring into my life. I also need to remember that in addition to attracting fire ants, I also drew to me hundreds of leaves falling to the ground together, which is something I wanted to be able to capture. Just not while standing in a colony of fire ants.  

Are you aware of what your thoughts are bringing you? What thoughts have you put out lately that you have seen return to you in some way?