News Beat, Lifting 9000 times your bodyweight Edition

Ants Invade Houston, Eat Computers

DALLAS — In what sounds like a really low-budget horror film, voracious swarming ants that apparently arrived in Texas aboard a cargo ship are invading homes and yards across the Houston area, shorting out electrical boxes and messing up computers.

The hairy, reddish-brown creatures are known as “crazy rasberry ants” _ crazy, because they wander erratically instead of marching in regimented lines, and “rasberry” after Tom Rasberry, an exterminator who did battle against them early on.

“They’re itty-bitty things about the size of fleas, and they’re just running everywhere,” said Patsy Morphew of Pearland, who is constantly sweeping them off her patio and scooping them out of her pool by the cupful. “There’s just thousands and thousands of them. If you’ve seen a car racing, that’s how they are. They’re going fast, fast, fast. They’re crazy.”

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