"Rasberry" ants invade Houston – and they love electronics

Talk about a nightmare: An army of tiny, hairy insects, seemingly impervious to pesticides, who love to bite humans and have the strange desire to nest in electronics—especially computers.

The AP reports that the busy little invaders—dubbed "crazy rasberry ants" (yep, it's "rasberry," not raspberry) after one Tom Rasberry, a Pearland, Texas exterminator and sworn enemy of the pesky buggers—were first spotted in 2002, and have since fanned out across five counties in the Houston area.

Not only do the ants—billions of them—enjoy biting humans, ruining plants, and chomping on native fire ants and ladybugs, but they also slurp up store-bought bug killers (think Raid) like soda pop, then ask for seconds.

Even worse, they love nothing better than to crawl into computers and wreck the circuitry inside. Computerworld reports that the rasberry ants have taken down a number of home and office computers, while three colonies of the ants were discovered at NASA's Johnson Space Center.

Also falling victim to the ants: sewage pumps, radios, fire alarms, and gas meters, the AP says.

And get this—when IT workers open infested computers, they find thousands of ant bodies inside, according to Computerworld. Nasty.

I have to say, I've seen gadgets wrecked by coffee spills, too much sun, water, gravity, sand...but bug infestations? That's a new one for me. And while sealing your PC in a plastic bag might (might) save it from critters, you'd probably overheat your system in the process.

So, any Texans out there with rasberry horror stories to share?

Related:
Ants swarm over Houston area, fouling electronics [Yahoo! News]