Things That Go Buzz in the Night

I am eternally leery of anything that crawls up my leg or flies into my face, which is why I’m writing today about killer bees and imported fire ants. They’re coming our way.

When I was a kid, I read about an army of ants in Africa, I think it was, that ate their way through a jungle and then through the jungle dwellers, crawling up their noses and into their ears and God knows where else.

Later I saw a movie about killer bees that raised hell in Houston, not only stinging people out in the open but following them into cars and houses while they screamed, “Hep, hep!” meaning “Help, help” in Texanese. It was horrible.

What called my attention to the Africanized bees, also known as killer bees or superbees, is that a hive was discovered not far from where I live in the Santa Monica Mountains.

It was in an oak tree in Calabasas, which is Spanish for Squash, and was neutralized after the heritage of its occupants was verified. Bees all look alike even to experts, so a way to tell killer bees from sweet, lovin’ honeybees is by their DNA.

While genetic evidence couldn’t nail O.J., it left no doubt, shudder, that the bees in Squash were killer bees, and the warnings went out from there.

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Cato Fiksdal says that in about a year every wild bee in L.A. County will be a killer bee, because they’ll just take over. Bee stings will become almost as common as liquor store holdups, especially in the rural areas.

Fiksdal isn’t just another guy off the street whistling up a panic, but the county’s agricultural commissioner, so he ought to know. Killer bees populate in the spring and summer, he says, but since we don’t have a spring this year, we’re safe until summer.

In the winter, the bees huddle in a tight ball and vibrate in order to generate heat, which is not dissimilar to what, you know, we do.

But when winter passes, they begin swarming, and it behooves us to be on the alert. Sting for sting, killer bees are no more lethal than honeybees, but since they have the instincts of a serial killer and attack in the thousands, their assaults can be lethal.

This is especially true if you’re allergic to the bee venom. One expert told me that the average healthy person can take up to 500 stings and survive, but stopping to count in the middle of an assault probably isn’t wise. Leave the calculating until later.

About the only thing you can do if attacked is cover your head and run like hell to an enclosed area. Screaming hysterically is optional. Jumping into water, by the way, isn’t advisable, Fiksdal says, because bees can see you in the water and will wait until you come up for air to jump you.

Drowning yourself, of course, will lessen the impact of the stings, but that isn’t recommended by bee safety experts as a reasonable alternative.

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Imported fire ants, so called because like everyone else in L.A. they aren’t native, are also appearing in the county. They too are aggressive little suckers and are overwhelming the calmer, peace-loving ants often found crawling around your sugar bowl.

Fire ants are bright red, about a quarter of an inch long, live in colonies of thousands and are not nearly as clever as the Woody Allen bug in the movie “Antz,” although they’re probably less neurotic.

Entomologist Brian Brown says that fire ants will sting the bejesus out of you if given half a chance and will disrupt the natural environment by attacking ground-nesting birds and other small animals.

“While they’re dangerous to people with allergies,” he said, “they aren’t like killer bees. They can’t race after you.” Thank God for that.

Neither Fiksdal nor Brown would speculate on why unpleasant creatures seem to congregate in L.A. County. The only reason anything unpleasant usually comes to L.A. is to break into show biz, but that obviously doesn’t apply to bees or ants. Ticks that carry Lyme disease have also been discovered in the city of Squash, by the way, another lethal little bug in the ‘hood.

I haven’t even mentioned the new giant whitefly, which has also moved into L.A. and will eat the hell out of your hibiscus plants and your bird of paradise, but they haven’t been known to kill humans. If they do come after you, however, just holler “Hep, hep” as loud as you can. There’s bound to be someone from Houston around to hep out.

Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com.