Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Attack of the Flying Ants



For the second time this week we came home at 7:30 tonight to find a MILLION flying ants in our house. I mean, no kidding, a million, and EVERYWHERE! Tobi our cat was the only one who was very entertained by the sight of them. They are about as big as dragonflies, and appear in swarms. They appear for like an hour, and then they die when their huge wings fall off, only to leave crawling bug things everywhere, with wings everywhere. It's really disgusting. They are super common in Durban, and they are attracted to light. So we immediately turned off all our lights, and they left for the outside ones, but they left their dying squirming friends with their left-over wings behind (ewww gross).

I googled it and found this interesting on a website in Hawaii:
"Flying Termites are a phenomenon that appear at about 7:30pm on most warm summer evenings. They are especially numerous if the day has been very hot. While a nuisance, you can count on them to be gone within a half-hour or so. Local folks can tell time by their appearance and disappearance."

and we got home at 7:30. So I'm typing this in the only room that doesn't have flying ants in it, my office (it was closed with the lights off!) while Clint wages war against all flying ant beings. Yuck! So tomorrow will be spent sweeping up icky wings and bugs out of my entire house!

5 comments:

Sybrand and Beth de Swardt said...

You should have seen the Sunday night that my dad was preaching and they all started to swarm around him and the pulpit. There were so many of them. It was sooo funny.

Unknown said...

eowwww soo gross! happy cleaning!!

Amanda said...

Oh my! That is one of the strangest things I've ever heard of! Ew.
By the way those were absolutely adorable pictures of Noah in your last post!

H said...

that is disgusting. I'm glad Clint could be there to help with the clean up!

Anonymous said...

You should try eating them, we all had to do it on programme, and they just taste a bit like peanut butter, there really good! We usually pulled the wings off first but you don;t have to...try it!