When entomology meets etymology

I'm having some trouble sitting still. You'll see why if you keep reading. Stop reading now if you're squeamish about bugs, or you maybe don't want too much information about my, um, mental health. But it's a funny story -- funny in the regular ha-ha way and also in that "isn't this a weird little planet we're on?" kind of way.

Part of the problem is that this time of year, at least where I live, bugs like to come inside. If they're spiders or other interesting bugs I mostly just let them stay, or take them gently outside if necessary. Their lives are pretty short and they generally go away on their own. Bugs that eat the house or infest my food are rather less welcome, even if they're really interesting. Termites, for example, or those moths that eat your sweaters and get into the pancake mix. Roaches are neither interesting nor welcome. They are the size of fucking basset hounds here, so they're pretty easy to track down & chase out of the house.

It's a little embarrassing that ants freak me out so much, but they do. Part of it has to do with the way they move all swarmy all over everything. I find it horrifying. And also that collective mind thing, that's scary too. Although it bothers me less when bees do it, for some reason. Bees don't bother me at all, or wasps. Bees and wasps and even hornets are interesting.

But ants, they've bothered me since I was a little kid, partly because I associated them with a phenomenon I used to call "itchul bugs," although I've since found there is a much better name for it, which I'll get to in a minute, because it does have to do with ants. My mother tells me that I was about four or five when I first complained about feeling like bugs were crawling on me even when I knew they weren't there. I said it felt like they were under my skin and had to admit that yes, I knew that wasn't possible. She told me that scratching would make it worse, and it turned out she was right. She was pretty sure I was imagining it, or that it was somehow from playing in the dirt all day. And it was my grandmother who first told me I could make the feeling stop if I looked really hard right at the itchy place and repeated to myself, "see, there aren't any bugs there." Bless her for teaching me that. Self-hypnosis is a really useful skill.

Anyway, the imaginary bug phenomenon has reappeared intermittently, but I hadn't been bothered much at all by it for years. It most often occurs when I get migraines or haven't slept in a long time. Then last spring I had a seriously unpleasant allergic response to some medication, and it's been annoying me pretty steadily since then. There's no skin irritation or anything. I've investigated a number of possible causes and have talked to a couple of doctors; there doesn't seem to be a lot I can do that works any better than doing what my grandmother suggested, but it would be good if I could stop doing whatver it is that sets it off. It's most likely part of the constellation of sensory weirdnesses that goes along with migraines, which I get a lot of. [update: Or maybe allergies. Duh. Seems like there's maybe something to this theory.]

I'll tell you what though, it got way way worse last week when the ants started showing up on my kitchen counter. I don't like to put out poison, but I did, and it didn't really help right away. I couldn't even go in there to eat or wash the dishes because it was absolutely and utterly terrifying. I made myself go in there for five minutes at a time until I had finally washed all the dishes and washed every surface with bleach. And of course then I found a large tin on the counter that had some dog food in it in case I have canine company. I got rid of that the other day and washed the tin and put it outside just in case there was some still in there and they came back for it. These ants seemed enthusiastic, I guess you could say, about the dog food. Finally, in the last few days they've started to slack off some, whether on account of the poison or the removal of the dog food. Or maybe the increasingly cold weather.

So I was looking up something in a reference book a little while ago, and (as I so often do) I got kind of distracted. And I have a lot of reference books. And once I started pulling on this thread, I couldn't think about anything other than the ants that are not crawling around under my skin. It's called formication, by the way. Isn't that a great word? And it has to do with ants! I mean, like, etymologically speaking. So anyway, here's what I found:

ant - Any of various social insects of the family Formicidae, characteristically having wings only in the males and fertile females and living in colonies that have a complex social organization. [Kingdom: Animalia, Phylum: Arthropoda, Class: Insecta, Order: Hymenoptera, Suborder: Apocrita Superfamily: Vespoidea, Family: Formicidae]

Formica is a genus of ants commonly known as wood ants. They typically secrete formic acid.

formic acid. - A colorless caustic fuming liquid, CH₂O₂, used in dyeing and finishing textiles and paper and in the manufacture of fumigants, insecticides, and refrigerants. So named on account of it was originally isolated by distilling ants (Latin formica).

Formica®, on the other hand, was invented in 1912 as an electrical insulator to serve as a substitute "for mica," hence the name. Duh. I was kind of hoping that it was called that on account of the irresistibility of countertops to ants. Or something like that.

formication. - A form of paresthesia or tactile hallucination; a sensation as if small insects are creeping under the skin. From the Latin formica, ant.

Eeeuw. Yes. That's it exactly.