A bizarre and slightly frightening report out today tells of a new breed of ant that has infiltrated five of the counties around Houston, Texas by way of a cargo ship. The little buggers (no pun intended) are small (a little bigger than fleas), travel in erratic lines and are called “crazy rasberry” ants. The good news is they eat the dreaded Texas fire ant. The bad news is they are attracted to electrical equipment and have wreaked all kinds of havoc on phone and computer systems in the Houston area.

“They have ruined pumps at sewage pumping stations, fouled computers and at least one homeowner’s gas meter, and caused fire alarms to malfunction. They have been spotted at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and close to Hobby Airport, though they haven’t caused any major problems there yet.”

If I didn’t know better, it seems as though nature is throwing yet another monkey wrench into our civilization. So far this year we’ve seen the devastating natural disasters in Myanmar and central China, the thinnest arctic sea ice ever recorded and now computer eating ants. You’d almost think the marketing folks behind M. Night Shyamalan’s latest flick, The Happening, met Mother Nature in a dark alley and made a deal for free PR. Now where’s my bug spray?