The ants keep on marching...

It was another one of those nights. I came back home at night. The rain was glistening on the dark pavement and there was a cloud of insects swarming the streetlight just down from me. I hadn’t been home yet, so all my lights were still off.

I considered the possibilities as I opened my gate and walked up the stairs to unlock my door. But really, there wasn’t too much I could do. It was too dark inside to see without the lights. I turned on the porch light first, hoping to draw them away and keep them outside.

Within minutes of turning on the kitchen light, the room was full of the fluttering of those papery wings. Like most insects, these ones are not particularly bright. They are drawn to light and don’t seem to be able to navigate with much finesse. They slam into my arms and legs and when I try and brush them off, their wings fall off and they fall squiggling to the floor.

My cat (who is fat and pregnant and still very much a kitten herself) is going crazy. It’s kitty bonanza time over here. The insects are easy enough to catch.

Some call them flying ants, others call them termites. They are a fixture of rainy season. Luckily they are hatched after the first couple of rains and then we don’t see them for another year. They come out of the ground and fly around for a few hours. Then they drop their wings and crawl away to do whatever it is that termites do when they’ve lost their wings. If you know it’s a termite night, you put the lights on outside your house and keep them off inside. In the morning, you will need to sweep all the wings off the floor. I knew someone who had termites so badly that they couldn’t walk in the house after a termite night without sweeping first the drifts and piles of dropped wings from the floor.

Many people, of course, will drool and they read this because flying ants can be a delicacy. Without their wings, they really are a decent sized grub. And so easy to catch! All you need to do is set up a bright light and then catch them by the handful. I can see some of my friends drooling now. “It’s too bad it only happens once a year,” they say, shaking their heads.

But I am holed up in my mosquito net in the dark, listening to the wings outside and I just can’t wait for this year’s termite season to be over.