Of my several years in the Philippines, I have discovered a
few things about its wildlife structure.
One is that Gecko’s are a constant co-resident in my house. Previously, they clung to the walls and
ceilings devouring unsuspecting insects that might happen to land or crawl
nearby. However, in the house I
currently live in, there are a special few who actually traipse across the
floor too. I have been told that is
rare, but I adapted well to having things skitter in front of me as I would
walk from one room to the other. On the
downside with floor walking Geckos, Mae Mae came running out of the kitchen a couple of nights
ago screaming as she had stepped on one with her bare feet. Seems that as
it was racing across the floor, when her foot and its body collided. The
poor thing was in its death throes by the time we had cone to investigate. I have even had the baby ones jump from the
top of the bedroom wall or ceiling onto the bed. At first, it was a bit unnerving, but then I
accepted the fact they were youngsters….and we all know how rambunctious young ones
can be.
We have also had the dreaded cockroaches to contend with. When I first moved here, they were literally
crawling out of the cracks, but after a year long eradication campaign, they
had, for the most part, been removed from my block abode. Mice had come to visit, but were no match for
those American built mouse traps and peanut butter bait. When sitting outside in the late afternoon, I
would witness RATS of all sizes scampering across the roadway in front of my cement
refuge. Fortunately, none ever came to
pay a visit. There had been other
unnamed insects assaulting my body when riding the motorbike around
sunset. They would pepper my face and
filter their way down my t-shirt to which I constantly had to smash and remove those
crawling creatures from my upper torso for awhile after I returned home.
Still, the most abundant insect and unending nuisance was the
ant. I had been pretty successful at
wiping out everything else, but the ants had been unceasing in their intrusion. I used bottles of ant poison and, at times, thought
that I had won the battle against those six legged foragers. Unfortunately, after a few days the hoards would
return with a vengeance. Ant spray had been
a minor deterrent, but again they would make new inroads toward their objective
of scavenging for food while making my life miserable. If the kids dropped a minute piece of food
scrap onto the floor, an army of red soldiers would appear out of nowhere to engulf,
break down, and haul away their prize. There was no room immune to their invasion.
When I had first arrived, they were even coming out of the ceiling in my bed
chamber.
It is with that in mind, that I had come to the conclusion
those spindly creations were becoming just as aggressive at defeating me as I
was at exterminating them. You could be
sitting on the throne in the “comfort room” and observe the crusty creatures
walk along the top lip of the porcelain tile half way up the wall. They were tiny red devils that had a bite
which would sting like the dickens along with leaving a decent little red welt
upon the aggrieved flesh. For me, they
were a plague upon my sanctuary and had to go.
Little did I realize they had the same plan for me.
One morning I was sitting quietly upon the “throne”
contemplating my day ahead. Unbeknownst
to me at the time, an ant had decided to investigate the roll of toilet tissue
I had hung on the bath rack. As I
unraveled the tissue from the roll, I discovered the errant creature upon the separated
fiber. I flicked the paper strip with my
free hand and went back to the mission of the day. I never gave it a thought as to where that
tiny mufti-legged bug would land.
I pulled the boxers up at the end of my daily routine and while
washing my hands, I suddenly felt this strange burning sensation from between
my loins. It quickly occurred to me that
I had not been diligent in watching which direction the ant had flown from the
toilet tissue and it appeared it had landed where no ant had gone before. However, as a second burning sensation rapidly
made itself apparent, I was confident the earlier discarded hexapod had not
traveled far enough. I immediately
returned to the comfort room and hastily removed my shorts but not before the
devilish ant had sunk its mandibles into my flesh a third time.
I brushed out my boxers and then poured cold water (no such
thing as hot water here) upon my “undercarriage” in hopes of flushing the
creature from my searing flesh. I
squeezed an abundant amount of body wash onto one hand and lathered up below in
an effort to cleanse myself of that six legged scourge. Even though the biting
had ceased, the damage had been done. The
terrible consequence of ant bites was not so much the initial irritation, but
it was the incessant itching afterward. For
the next two days, no matter where I was at, I was constantly tormented by an
overwhelming urge to itch where I shouldn’t.
My children always attempted at having the last word in our
many conversations, but it was the lowly red ant that ended up with the “last
bite”.
Daryl A. Cleveland
01-05-2013
