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Caribbean Crazy Ants!

11 Jan

January 11, 2012

Nobody respects ants. Big deal, ants. So what? Sure, nobody likes them, but if you walk into your kitchen at 3am and flip on the light, which would you rather see?

A- a nest of black widow spiders
B- your brother-in-law in his underwear raiding your fridge
C- a couple of ants

Ants are the afterthoughts of the bug world. OK, they can ruin a picnic, but so can Paulie Shore, and of the two, I’d rather have ants show up. (Now before you say “fire ants” remember that I am writing from New York City where we are tougher than that.)

You see an ant you step on it you keep walking. Unless we are talking about Them!

But that’s Hollywood. In order to make the humble ant into a threat they had to use the standard 1950’s boogeyman “Atomic Radiation” to make them into the size of a latter-day Orson Welles and even then all they did was hang out in the sewer. I’d have left them alone and let the giant albino alligators take care of them.

The other way for Hollywood to turn the pathetic little members of the family Formicidae into a threat is to up the ante and instead of one or two or even a few dozen, have about a gazillion trillion show up at your picnic. That’s too much for just one can of Raid.

The Naked Jungle stars Charlton Heston and please give me a second to get this out of my system.

“A planet where ants evolved from men?’
“Get your stinking mandibles off me you damn dirty ants!”
“The only good ant is a dead ant.”

Thank you. I see Heston in a movie and I have Planet of the Apes flashbacks. Good thing The Omega Man isn’t that quotable or we’d be here all day.

600full-the-naked-jungle-screenshot

The Naked Jungle is based on a story called Leiningen Versus the Ants by Carl Stephenson. Written in 1938, there’s no need for me to summarize it because you pretty much saw it all in the clip above. YouTube is a real boon for lazy writers like me.

“But Mr. Blog,” you are saying, “that’s all movie bullshit. In real life I get ants in my toilet all the time and one flush takes care of them. Ants are no real problem.”

Please stop using bad language in my blog. And remind me to never go to the bathroom in your house.

But seriously, wonder if the tiny little ant can really pose a danger to the world at large?

OK, I get that it is hard to take “Caribbean Crazy Ants” seriously- what, too much rum? But if that was your half-acre of land and you had two inches of dead ants on the ground and millions more on the march you wouldn’t be laughing.

Who would expect ants to be so blood-thirsty as to launch “revenge attacks”? These guys are the Bin Ladens of the insect world. The University of Florida has a pretty good site about them if you are interested and want information more scientific than “crazy ants”. According to the UoF, “Pest control operators using liquid and/or granular broad-range insecticides appear unable to control this nuisance ant.”

According to this MSNBC article, they have been known to not only destroy bee hives but also to- get ready to worry- “disable huge industrial plants.”

And those fire ants I laughed at earlier? These guys wipe them out like they were an afterthought. I’m not laughing now.

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A New York Minute (10)

9 Jan

January 9, 2012

This is your New York Minute.

One thing I love is local history, and my part of New York has more than its share.

On September 3rd 1609, explorer Henry Hudson, who had set sail from Europe six months before, reached the New World and found himself in what is now called Lower Gravesend Bay, just off the shore of Brooklyn and anchored by the small piece of land that the later Dutch settlers would call Coney Island. It was here that he was attacked and driven off by unfriendly Native Americans. Even back then Brooklyn was a tough place. He quickly continued up the bay, passing through the present day location of the Verrazano Bridge and up the river that bears his name, the Hudson.

The name of his ship? The Half Moon.

Flash forward to 1927. The Half Moon Hotel was built right on the boardwalk in Coney Island, close to where Hudson’s crewman John Coleman was killed with an arrow through the neck. In fact, I can just about see that spot from my roof.

This is my part of town.

The Half Moon was a luxurious, 14 story behemoth just next to the amusement parks. Coney Island back then was still a playground for the wealthy, though the Great Depression was about to change things a bit.

The Half Moon Hotel achieved a degree of infamy in 1941. New York City had for decades been in the grip of organized crime. Murder Inc. was a vicious organization of mafia groups that was led by Albert Anastasia, who later became the boss of the Gambino crime family. One member of Murder Inc., a thug named Abe “Kid Twist” Reles, was caught by the police and was facing certain execution for a slew of gangland murders. Rather than sit in the electric chair he turned informant- or rat, depending on your point of view,  and gave information that put a half dozen infamous gangsters in the death house. This didn’t sit too well with Albert Anastasia, who was next in the government’s sights.

Kid Twist was to be the sole witness in Anastasia’s trial on November 12th. The government put him up in the Half Moon Hotel under the perhaps not-so-watchful eyes of six police detectives. There are some interesting theories about what happened next, but in the early morning hours of November 12th, 1941, Kid Twist Reles was forcefully escorted out of a sixth floor window and died on the ground below.

On the other hand, Albert Anastasia slept very well that night.

The Half Moon Hotel eventually became a hospital and later a home for the aged and sat on its imposing perch until 1996, when it was torn down shortly before it could be landmarked.

Henry Hudson, Kid Twist Reles, Coney Island, and The Half Moon Hotel still endure with a cinematic legacy. Murder Inc, starring one of my favorite actors Peter Falk as Kid Twist, opened in theaters in 1960. And yes, you can get it on Netflix.

The final word to the Kid Twist affair is best quoted from a popular saying of the time, “not all canaries can fly.”

This has been your New York Minute.

 

 

An audio version of this legend recently appeared in the amazing FlashPulp website. Check them out for awesomeness and goodies!

 

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