Dominant Species
Insects are an unavoidable fact of life in Pemba. Mosquitoes are evidently the most infamous of the lot, peppering limbs with incredibly itchy bites and giving the wonderful gift of dangerous tropical diseases. I got my taste of malarial delirium right when I arrived here last July and, although I got a relatively mild dose, it was hardly an experience I wish to repeat. Since then I have been lucky, thanks in no small part to living in a 5th floor apartment with a breeze and a conspicuous lack of winged bloodsuckers. To make up for this pleasant shortcoming, however, there are various spiders, flies, mites and various unidentifiable creatures to keep my housemate and I company. There is even the occasional cockroach that casually strolls in the front door- and then usually leaves after being ‘escorted’ off the balcony. However, these all pale in comparison to the king of the insect kingdom, the undisputed champion of all things that creep, crawl and scurry about: yes, I’m talking about the ant.
Anyone still believing that humans are the dominant species on this planet needs look no further than my kitchen to be convinced otherwise. In there, a veritable civilization is at work to process any grocery suffering the unfortunate fate of being placed on a cupboard shelf, counter, fridge top or table surface. Leave some food unattended and watch as a superhighway of ants soon appears- sometimes in seconds – to do their work. I wish I could say their tastes were traditional, that there was reason to the rhyme of what they attacked. Jam, sugar, sticky sweet things: these are targets I would expect. But no, these ants will go after anything at hand: bread, cereal, dishes, fruit bowls, crumbs, old paper and even drops of water.
Furthermore, they are wily and completely unpredictable. They will leave a particular food alone for days, just long enough to trick you into thinking they are no longer attracted to it. So you let down your guard just a bit and then WHAM! Your stupidity and carelessness are exposed as the victorious ants make off with their prize. Sometimes they just run around the walls frantically, or funnel up and down the doorframe just to remind you who is boss. For a while they even abandoned the kitchen for the bedrooms and bathrooms, apparently gaining a sweet tooth for my toothpaste. Oh well, I figured, at least they were out of the kitchen. But that phase was short-lived, and soon not only had they returned to the kitchen but also expanded their operations to the front room, where any food or dish left out of sight for a moment too long was soon moving a whole lot more. The ants were in complete control.
My housemate and I have tried to fight back, mostly in vain. Buns are bagged and hung off wall hooks- but still get hit. Sugar is double and triple-bagged and then zip-locked, and yet somehow the little monsters still find their way inside. At one point I hit an army of ants in the sink with a good blast from the tap, and yet they continued to scurry around and cause trouble underwater. Standing there once again beaten, I despaired: how do you stop these things!? Bygone has been sprayed numerous times on the surfaces of our humble household, sometimes to the point where poisoned ants are literally pouring out of cracks in the wall. Frustrated hands have wildly slapped down on surfaces felling untold ant numbers. In the end, however, all this seems to accomplish is to piss them off and embolden them further. Nothing is safe. It’s only a matter of time before I wake up one morning to find myself being carried off.
The other day, I came home from work to find the usual ant sprawl in the cupboard, this time focused on my box of Honey Nut Corn Flakes. By then, I’d mostly given up on trying to fight their onslaught, and that morning I had tried only half-heartedly at best to seal the cereal after breakfast. Let the little devils get in there like they always do, what do I care anymore. I thought I’d finally resigned myself to the fact that the ants eat more of my food than I do. I thought I’d given up.
But then, staring at that box in the intensely humid evening of a tropical African summer, something in me snapped. Maybe it was my species survival instinct, maybe it was all the frustration from months of ant visitations that finally boiled over, I don’t know. But all of the sudden I decided there was no way the ants were going to take my cereal from me. They weren’t going to win this time. Out of nowhere, I decided to fight back.
So I quickly poured the Honey Nut Corn Flakes into a large Tupperware container, dispensing justice to a good number of ants as I crushed the plastic bag and cereal box and tossed them away. I then proceeded to shake the Tupperware container vigorously. As the guilty ants straggled out of the cereal, dazed and confused, they met very timely demises courtesy of my vengeful hands. Then I started shaking again. And more ants scurried out to their doom. I shook and squashed repeatedly as needed, until I was relatively satisfied that my cereal was ant-free. Hopefully a horrified survivor or two made it back to its brethren to spread the news: watch out, this guy means business now.
That evening, I fought back and won. I had defended the dominance of humanity and challenged the ants’ mastery of both my kitchen and northern Mozambique in general. Maybe now they would think twice about getting into my food. Maybe now they would think twice about so arrogantly parading around the surfaces of my humble home.
Or maybe not. I really need to find more Tupperware.