Bug Kingdom

I’m not sure if I have written about bugs here but given my recent experiences I thought it might be in order. First let me say, in the tropics there are a heck of a lot of bugs. I have been with ants since the day I moved in. Long ago I gave up trying to get them out of the house. It was in a losing battle. They reside on all three floors of the house and are the very small variety. I discovered one day if you drop a bit of food on the floor, the ants will cart it away for you and then they get out of the way. So I decided to leave the ants alone. Until yesterday. Yesterday I discover a troop of ants in an unopened cereal box. There was a fine dust inside the box so I am assuming that is some of the paper they have digested. The inner liner was still sealed so they had not made their way into the cereal. I removed the liner and cereal and put it in a zip lock bag. While in the cabinet I discovered that another troop had managed to climb inside a Tupperware container where I keep the cereal that has been opened. I have no idea how that happened.

Last night I had asked our new neighbor and friend Peter and his stepdaughter Mai to join me for dinner since our spouses were on the road with work. I grated some Parmesan cheese right before they came and set it on the counter in the serving kitchen. When they came they followed me into the kitchen as I cooked the pasta and reheated the marinara. We were in there maybe 15 minutes. When I came back into the serving kitchen, the cheese bowl was filled with what looked like ghost ants. Very small, light colored fast moving ant like critters. Bummer. Back into the kitchen to grate more cheese.

It is not uncommon to be sitting at breakfast and have a few ants scurry across the table while we are eating. This morning I found several of the ghost ants crawling on me. I am very careful about not leaving any food scraps around because of the problems with bugs here. Yet they have managed to find the sugar bowl that has a lid and sometimes when I lift the lid, a great deal of scurrying ensues.

What I dislike the most are the roaches. When I lived in Florida we called them palmetto bus. They are large here, about 2-3 inches. They fly, which can be terrifying. My fantasy nightmare is that I would wake up with one on my body. Yuck! Hasn’t happened yet. I hate killing them because it is so unpleasant.

We leave tomorrow for Navsari (Gujarat) India and will be gone eight days. Ron will be completing a professional exchange he arranged way before we knew we would be in Sri Lanka. Raju had stayed with us shortly before we left for Sri Lanka. He went to work everyday with Ron to learn about city management in America. Now it is Ron’s turn. We are very excited about the staying with Raju’s family. It is a privilege anytime you can stay with someone rather than a hotel. It is a real opportunity to see how people from another culture live. I’m also excited because Raju’s wife, Sangita, has promised to teach me how to prepare Indian cuisine, which happens to be one of our two favorites. Thai cuisine is our other favorite.

That’s it from the land of sunshine.