On Winged Ants
Friday, April 29th, 2005Thursday night, the winged ants came out.
They swarmed out of cracks in the wall, out of corners and crevices, and took flight, hovering around the lights of the kitchen and the sala. Some, perhaps too excited at the prospect of romance to see where they were going, zipped directly into the noses of the equally excited house lizards.
My father had said that they come out just before the rainy season. His father had taught him that, and perhaps, in turn, my grandfather’s father told young Gerardo Baula that fact, as they sat in their rural hut somewhere in Abra.
It was something that just came to me as I was trying to rid the house of the pests, these and others that flew straight towards the light: Plant a coconut tree where you intend to build your house. Do not sweep the floors at night. Just before you put in your new house’s posts, put a one-peso coin in the post holes.
The flying ants come with the rain. An earthquake signals the change of seasons. If the children fly kites, the harvest will be small. If they play with marbles and tops, a bountiful harvest. Farmer’s wisdom, to be sure, passed on from generation to generation. Except, perhaps, that my grandfather would be the last to find use for these maxims. His would be the last generation to watch the seasons, till the earth, wait for the rains. His seed would not find any use for the practical wisdom that were older than he is. Thirty years from the time when he would relate these to his eldest, they would just become artifacts of a simpler, harder time, when life comes and goes with every turn of the season.
And, yet, I still remember them, that Thursday night, as I was busily spraying the ants with modern insecticide.
