Winged-termites, Lizards, Ants and a Postgraduate Application
As with all abstract writings, I shall try to connect the things I have mentioned in the title. To make it even more challenging, I shall connect these four elements in a single sentence at the end of this blog. Yes, these four are interconnected as far as last night was concerned. Last night was really weird. I got home around 7 pm and noticed that there were gazillions of winged-termites hovering around a halogen bulb outside the premises of our house. (my colleague informed me just as I am typing this blog, that these are actually termites that are in their final stage of life cycle. No wonder they don’t last till the following day.) Around three days ago, my acceptance letter for postgraduate studies arrived. It was delivered by DHL all wrapped up in bubble wraps. Oh vanity! What a waste of resources! Imagine enclosing a single envelope containing a single letter inside a brown-envelope sized package with bubble wraps all around. Well who am I to complain, I guess that’s part of what you pay for express mail. And the best thing is: I get to pop the bubble wraps after! hehe…
Now for the correlations. My siblings have always been complaining about the lizards and ants in our house. They are all over the place! I was musing that the lizards should have controlled the ants’ population (by the way, how do you control lizard population?) but apparently, the ants are simply too much to handle even for this insect-starved gecko-sounding lizards. The lizards though are starting to get annoying. They make this gecko-like sound with the snap of their tails all the time. I mean I’ve been awaken by this sound during the wee hours of the morning. Talk about a bugging alarm clock. Plus, I always have this bad feeling that these lizards might one day fall off from the ceiling and straight into my face or even worse into my gaping mouth while am sleeping!!! Well last night brought all these elements together. And at last they all made sense. With the end-of-life-cycle-stage termite invasion, I was hard-pressed to find a solution to quickly eradicate them lest they invade our rooms. My good ‘ol pop suggested the ancient technique of putting water in a basin and then raising it up near the lights so as to make the termites drown into the water. Well, that technique worked for a while, like 10 seconds, because before long the damn termites were crawling all over my face, arms and body (imagine a scene in fear factor where they have to endure creepy crawlies all over their bodies). I had to rethink my strategy and I had to do it fast coz I had to fax my postgrad application that night and they were all over the office where the fax machine sat. Talk about bad timing. Then I thought of a brilliant idea. Instead of me drawing the water close to them, why not make them draw closer to the water. How? By putting the basin below a low-hanging fluorescent lamp while switching off all the other lights. Waalaaaa!!! And like magic the pestering termites were all concentrated in one area. I was so happy that I was able to conquer a whole battalion of devil-may-care termites that night. As I was watched them dive randomly into the basin of water, I can’t help but notice that I wasn’t the only one enjoying the scene. Apparently, all the annoying lizards were also feasting on this rare termite buffet. They were all over the walls, crawling and snatching as many termites as possible. So that’s what the lizards were for. To wait for this fateful day to happen, and show their worth. Thanks my reptilian friends, for without your help maybe we could not have eliminated the termites that fast. Now lastly the ants. Not all of the termites drowned in the deadly basin of water. Some of them simply fell to the ground. And like an army of coordinated force and strategy, the ants came out marching! They devoured all termites that fell to the ground - with or without wings, dead or alive. Talk about scavenging! Because of the coordinated efforts of the lizards and ants, the pesky winged-termites were easily eliminated and I was finally able to fax my application. But this is not the end of the story as far as my postgrad application is concerned. But this is something I would like to talk about the next time around…
