Doodlebug is the journal I kept when my brother and I took two and a half months to drive across the country. I edited the journal down to around 200 pages and wrote an introduction and afterward.  We started on  January 1st, 1994.  Here is a sample from February 8th  when we were camped in the Big Thicket of Texas.

Feb. 8th

On the river, Louis saw a large snake slipping from a log into the water and another leaving the bank. It may have been a water moccasin and he may have fulfilled his lifelong obsession with seeing a poisonous snake, but we don’t know. He did spot an anthill on the way back.

“Careful, those might be red ants,” I cautioned.

“Not all red ants sting,” he said, squatting beside it and unsheathing his magnifying glass.

“Careful, don’t stir them up.”

He bent over the hill, trying to get focused on an ant, putting his face and nose danger-ously close to them. I watched nervously for signs of a war party advancing up my leg.

“Aha!” Louis said, sitting up and looking at his arm. “Great, I’ve got one on my arm. Yes, it has formic acid.” He squinted at it with the glass.

“Does that mean they can sting?”

He prodded it with his finger. “Yes, there he goes. Have you ever noticed that some ants hunch up when they sting?”

“No, I never noticed that.”

“They bite you and then hunch up because their formic acid is in their last section, so they have to hunch to spray it into the cut.”

“Really?”

“Yup, look at that.” He showed me the sting, slightly swollen and turning red, and he flicked the ant back onto the hill.

“Did you know that in some famous mu-seum, I forget which one, there is a rare species of ant found by an English scientist? He found it while he was having supper with Stalin. It ran across the table, and he recognized it and put it in vodka.”

“That works?” I said.

“The best, strongest alcohol will work. Now, army ants, I would like to see some of those. You know they can kill a deer?”

“No, I didn’t know that. Do they live around here?”

“No, only in the tropics. Some of them are so specialized their jaws are only good for ripping and tearing. They can’t feed themselves without the others.”