Of Ants and Coonhounds

Work of the Allegheny Mound Ant

Went out to one of my favorite woods last week. Winter had finally released its grip on that land, or at least enough of its hold that there was a reasonable chance of the “seasonally-maintained” roads being passable.

Turns out, I called it.

Pictured here is an Allegheny Mound Ant mound found in that woods. This one (of many thereabouts) is about as high as they get--about mid-thigh on me, and I’m close to 6-foot.

During my military career, I was stationed in the southern United States for three assignments and became rather well acquainted (not intentionally) with the fire ant. While it can’t hold a candle to a fire ant’s sting, the Allegheny Mound Ant can swarm with best of them when their nest is disturbed, and what their bite lacks in punch, they make up for in quantity.

This forest also reminds me of a story involving a young man (let's call him Nathan), who I took coon hunting on several occasions. Last week, I ran across his wife at a local store, and she told me that Nathan had just turned 32. It wasn't far from these mounds where I took Nathan on his first coon hunt when he was only 12.

Let’s do a little quick math . . . Ouch.

On that long ago, mid-January night, with a full moon hanging above the forest and an inch of snow on the ground, we had Bill, a black and tan, and Abel, a redtick, with us. Come January in our neck of the woods is ringtail mating season, and the boar raccoon go from den tree to den tree to see if there’s a ring-tailed lady in waiting. Soon after we turned them loose from my truck, Bill and Abel treed on a huge red oak--a den tree--nestled up against a stand of white pine. No surprise treeing there. But sometimes there’s the chance you catch a raccoon outside the den. 

Several minutes after we’d joined Bill and Abel beneath that oak, neither of our headlights could pick up that telltale amber reflection of a raccoon’s eye. So, I decided to try an ol’ coon hunter’s trick.

We were on opposite sides of the tree, when I said, “Nathan, turn off your headlight, and we’ll see if we can’t moonlight the coon.”

Over the hounds’ barking, which could’ve awoken the dead*, I likely missed any trepidation in Nathan’s voice.

“Turn off . . . my headlight?” he asked.

“Yep.”

“You sure, Mr. C?”

“Yep.”

And so he complied--lights out.

We searched diligently, but there was no dark bulge of a raccoon's form outlined in that oak's skeletal branches. But I did discover something else that night.

“Mr. C?” Nathan called out.

“Yes, Nathan?”

In that stoic, how-do-you-know-someone’s-from-Painted-Post manner, Nathan said matter-of-factually, “Did I ever tell you that I’m not overly crazy about the dark?”

Huh.

“Well, no,” I finally managed, “you failed to mention that. But go ahead and turn your light back on. That raccoon either moved on or is inside the tree.”

A martial artist would’ve been hard pressed to turn on a headlight faster.

We would go on several more hunts in that place, and the nighttime forest became a thing familiar to Nathan. Years later, Nathan would become a US Marine. Can’t say whether or not those trips to the woods chasing ringtails had any effect on his decision to join the Corps.

But I can say, with a fair amount of certainty, the dark no longer bothered him.

I still pass by that den tree some nights where Nathan and I treed with Bill and Abel. Part of that old oak came down after one storm to reveal its hollow interior. Perhaps it won't house another family of ringtails, but it will always hold the memories of an old man who still walks with hounds in the forest dark.
 
 
*I swear Bill and Abel were the loudest hounds in Steuben County. I’d been traveling back and forth to Atlanta, Georgia, every week for several months, and had water trapped in my inner ear due to the frequent takeoffs and landings. That trapped water vibrated in my ear on account of Abel’s and Bill’s treed bawls, literally squeezing the water from my ears into my eyes.

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