Flowers, Food, and Biting Vermin (Part 1)

Well, this last weekend was an adventure, I'll tell you what! It really started on Sabbath, when Summer and I decided we'd go for a little walk in the afternoon. There's a dirt road that goes up the mountain behind the school (where we cut bamboo a few weeks ago). We were enjoying ourselves and the scenery when we came across a section of the road that had a good number of large red ants on it. We stopped and gawked for a little bit, seeing how they covered a large dead leaf. Cool! Well, we decided we'd leave them to their lunch and head on up the road further. Our imaginations were on overdrive as we walked, and not a half kilometer up the road, Summer realized there's something crawling on my feet. She looked down and there, crawling all over her sandaled feet, were dozens of the same types of red ants we had seen earlier.

"Aaaaahhhhhh! Get 'em off, get 'em off! Michael! They're all over!"

I, of course, being the calm and collected one that I am, coolly reassured her that there was nothing to worry about; just brush them off and get off the part of the road that they were infiltrating. As I said this, I looked down. Lo, and behold, there was no part of the road that the ants didn't cover. Moreover, they were all over my sandaled feet as well.

Picture if you will two innocent farang (foreigners) in the forests of Thailand, dancing around, half tempted to strip off all their clothes as troops upon troops of ants in their little combat uniforms march up and down their legs with swords and pikes and tridents and nunchuckus and fire pokers and bows and arrows and guns, a look in their eyes as if they are hunting blood, and they have just found a cache, singing:

I don't know, but I just might (echo)
bite these farang, cause they're so white (echo)
They just think we're puny ants (echo)
But we'll make them take off their pants (echo)
Sound off! March, march!
Sound off! Bite, bite!

And there you have a small picture of the truth. Just then a Thai man on a motorbike came driving by, and just smiled and said, "ants!" as he drove by, leaving us dancing in the middle of the road. I can just picture him telling the story in his village as everybody laughs at the funny farang. Well, needless to say, that cut our walk a bit short. We didn't actually strip off our clothes, but we probably should have as we had stray ants biting us the rest of the way down the road back to the house. It was quite amazing really... These ants didn't just start munching away. No no... they had to get into position! They stuck their little behinds up in the air and acted as if they were trying to burrow into our skin. They did the same with our clothes too. Anything they could do to get their little mandibles into something. So that was Sabbath afternoon. I'm going to break this blog into two parts so it's easier for you to read. Blessings!

~M