Ant Attack!

John E. posted this a few days ago:

A routine patrol for a Tracy-area California Highway Patrol officer, Daniel Garza, turned into a fight to save the life of a 41-year-old Los Angeles man paralyzed by an attack that no one saw coming.

...As he changed the tire, Johnck said he noticed a dozen ants climbing over his feet, which were exposed by his flip-flops.

...“All of a sudden, the dozen turned into 10 dozen and my whole leg was blackened with ants,” Johnck said during a telephone interview from his Los Angeles home on Sept. 24. “I freaked out and started to brush them off, and that’s when they started to bite me.

...Within minutes, he said, he became lightheaded and thought he was going into shock. He said he lay down and put his feet up on a cooler but soon realized he needed help fast.

...He was going into anaphylactic shock.

...Johnck said he researched red ant attacks and discovered that they cause a few deaths in the United States each year. As a director and producer of travel films, he has climbed Mount Everest, Mount Whitney and the Swiss Alps and been bitten by many insects in different parts of the world, but he has never had a reaction like the one he experienced in Tracy.

Garza said he was happy he was in the right place at the right time.

“With most incidents, we get there after the incident,” he said. “We don’t usually get there from the start to finish. It was one heck of an experience. Something you don’t expect to happen while out on patrol every day. I was glad I was able to do what I could to help save him.”