Leiningen Versus the Ants

What a night we had last night.

A memorable short story that both Chris and I read in High School was called “Leiningen Versus the Ants”. It tells the story of a man whose coffee plantation in Brazil is threatened by a large swarm of deadly ants. Instead of fleeing, he prepares elaborate defenses to fight the ants and save his plantation.” The main or obvious theme is Man vs Nature. During our travels, we have been in a few situations where we could relate to that story. Last night was one of those times.

Yesterday, the handyman, Jaime, came to spray around the house for termites. This is a new house with lovely wooden beams. Daily, we have done a walkabout around and in the house to check for tunnels because it doesn’t take long for those pests to come in and eat anything wooden.

Termite nests in the trees are everywhere in the jungly area around us. In fact, there is a nest close to the house but apparently if you disturb these nests you may end up with a bigger problem than you had before.

So, getting back to Jaime spraying the area around the house. He must have done a good job as every little critter ran for their lives.

The problem started at 11 pm. We had gone to bed and for some reason a dog across the street started to bark, and bark and bark. It just wouldn’t stop.

Chris decided to get up so he turned on the light and saw that the bedside table and lamp was covered in ants. And then looking closer, he realized that the ants covered our bed and very tiny ants were even in our bed carrying eggs! A tsunami of ants.

Looking around, we saw that ants of all sizes were all over two of the walls. A line of ants went to the ceiling but they were everywhere - on the curtain rod, in the curtains, on the window sills, Everywhere!

We went into the bathroom. Everywhere!

We went outside and once again there were ants on the floor in front of our room and on the walls.

Chris ran to get a ladder to check the top of the wall in the bathroom and some ant spray to make a ‘wall’ of spray around the bed. I stripped the bed and shook the sheets out. I’ll leave it up to your imagination how we reacted and what it was like. Thank heavens they were only ants, and not spiders or scorpions.

I guess when Jaime had sprayed, he had disturbed a nest of regular ants and they were evacuating their nest through our room.

By 2:30 a.m., the dog had stopped barking and the ants were all gone, but the room was smelling badly of bug spray. We remade the bed and left the ladder in the shower.

Sleep didn’t come easily but I guess that in our story of The Smiths Versus the Ants we won. For now.

P.S. One good thing came out of it. Chris unexpectedly was able to learn of Morrie’s fate in the book he is reading, “Worksong” by Ivan Doig, at 2:30 in the morning.Read more