He examined it closely. I loomed over his shoulder to get a closer look. He let out a loud laugh. “Are you serious. Fire ants!” “Yep, you have to wear that on your boot now,” Doc said. Doc had given a red dog tag with the words, “Fire ant,” on it. Which means he is allergic. “Is this a joke? “ FireAnt said laughing. “No, and you know that if you get bit by fire ants again…..you could die.” Fear shot over FireAnt’s face. He turned towards me then looked closely at his polka dot arms. “Doc, tell this mother fucker that he isn’t getting ant venom out of his arms by scratching and picking at it,” I said. Doc looked at FireAnt concerned, “No, don’t do that!” “But, I feel their poisons invading my insides!” “Don’t scratch FireAnt!” FireAnt moaned, “Fuck!”

To this day you can look at FireAnt’s arms and see little circular scars. He refuses to wear the red dog tags, but we all know about his fire ant problems. We joke with him all the time when we see I fire ant running. “Look out! A fire ant! He is coming for you! He thinks your another fire ant!” Or a lot of the time FireAnt will have a joke to himself about it. Like the one time when we were in the California desert doing training. There was a bunch of fire ants around us. He put his arms out palms up and yelled, “Come to me my little friends. Carry me to my next destination!” Sometimes I think this incident forever changed him.

When I want to explain to someone how crazy he is I just use this story as a reference.