Add THIS to your list of Disaster Recovery woes!

One thing you can always say about disaster recovery planning and response is that things are never dull.  Today, word comes that Texas IT professionals have a new risk to worry about. This risk is almost too small to see -- but its impact is promising to be interesting.

I have taken a few snippets from the Associated Press story of today.  The entire story can be found at Ants swarm over Houston area, fouling electronics.

DALLAS (AP) - In what sounds like a really low-budget horror film, voracious swarming ants that apparently arrived in Texas aboard a cargo ship are invading homes and yards across the Houston area, shorting out electrical boxes and messing up computers.

The hairy, reddish-brown creatures are known as "crazy rasberry ants"-crazy, because they wander erratically instead of marching in regimented lines, and "rasberry" after Tom Rasberry, an exterminator who did battle against them early on.

The ants have spread to five Houston-area counties since they were first spotted in Texas in 2002.

Worse, they, like some other species of ants, are attracted to electrical equipment, for reasons that are not well understood by scientists.

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.

And when you do kill these ants, the survivors turn it to their advantage: They pile up the dead, sometimes using them as a bridge to cross safely over surfaces treated with pesticide.

I can see it now:  An army of these flea-sized ants meanders aimlessly toward the general direction of Johnson Space Center -- until they take a whiff of Mission Control and make a beeline for the consoles, and as bad luck would have it, just as the latest Shuttle mission is unfolding.  Gives new meaning to the words, "Houston, we have a problem...."

OK, amateur entomologists, let's review.  Apparently these little critters really, really like electronics. They can't be killed by conventional pesticides. And they have no rhyme nor reason for going where they go or doing what they do. They also are very clever and they go MacGyver on you!

Now how does a data center director prepare for this kind of calamity?  OK, so the killer bees did not pan out as everyone thought it would.  But an ant the size of a flea that has an affinity for our IT stuff?  Where is Michael Caine (Irwin Allen's killer bee epic The Swarm, for you Gen Y's) when you need him?

Getting serious just for a quick moment:  I wonder if DDT will stop the bugs?  It is certainly worth a try.  The World Health Organization (!) has repeatedly asked for the resumption of DDT manufacturing, since they are satisfied the health risks from the 1960s were overblown and since it is the only proven pesticide that will faithfully reduce the mosquito population and thus reduce malaria and save millions and millions of human lives.  Maybe DDT is the only thing that can stop these pesky ants before they start eating data centers and Best Buys.  Oh the horror!