I can hear a fluttering against the fluorescent light bulb in my room, but I take little notice of it as night-time insects frequent this place if they can negotiate the mosquito netting on the windows. Yet after some time it is still there, and now there sounds to be more of whatever it is. I cannot see the perpetrator from here, and so I return to the task I am focusing on.
Now it is distracting me and my concentration has been broken. I turn to watch more closely. At first I see one or two, then a few more. I am not exactly sure what they are. Their wings are delicate and golden and far outsize their little bodies. The wings are in two pairs and they resemble a bi-plane when they fly.
My windows are open and the netting is insufficient to keep these creatures out. I open my door, turn on the balcony light and begin to close my windows. Suddenly I am inundated with what turns out to be flying termites and I turn to look out across the guest house gardens. A lamp is swathed in a cloud of them. I quickly turn off the balcony light, but now they are more determined to get inside to the light in the room. I turn that one off too.
Outside I watch the drama unfold around the lamp light. A golden cloud rises, falls, swarms, departs. Above me I hear the squeaks and cries of bats circling this feast that Mother Nature has laid on for them. It's raining again (this is the start of the monsoon season) and this will knock down many of the termites who are not used to using wings.
Back in my room and despite closing the windows and turning off the lights the number of insects is increasing. Wings drop off and the fat bodied termites walk across the cool stone-tiled floor as their smaller relatives, the ants, begin their night's work of clearing up the debris.
Saturday, 4 June 2011
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