Ants

The hot season is fast approaching southern India. I've noticed changes just in the three months I've been here. When I first arrived night were slightly cool. You could sometimes even get away with wearing a light sweatshirt Now, that is a long lost memory.

As the weather gets hotter, more and more bugs begin to appear. They have begun to come into houses and rooms. This is because it's cooler inside than out, and therefor more desirable.

This didn't really bother me or even effect me until a couple of days ago. I was turning on my laptop to start writing something when I suddenly realized that there were ants crawling all over me. I brushed them off, only to discover, to my horror, that they were coming from inside my laptop. I'd been told this happens, but somehow I always imagined it happening to someone else.

What the ants do is start a nest inside computers. It's warm and safe inside the machines. Plus they have plenty of food to eat (in the form of rubber). This sounds kind of funny and like not such a big deal, but it is. Ants can completely destroy a computer within weeks.

Well, I didn't want my computer to be completely destroyed, so I took drastic action. First I tried to open the computer up and exterminate them by hand. This didn't go so well. My computer is sealed pretty tight.

Then I decided to put the computer in an airtight bag. The ants would suffocate. Even as I did this part of me was saying “This is stupid, ants are the toughest creatures on the planet, they won't suffocate any time soon”.

As I waited for the ants to suffocate, I began asking local people what they do when they have an ant problem. They told me buy a certain kind of chalk. It's meant to kill cockroaches, but works just fine on ants. What you do is draw a line of the chalk around you computer and just wait for the ants to die. I took this advice and sure enough, withing four hours I didn't see any more ants crawling around. To prevent any further infestations I've taken to keeping my computer in a ziploc bag.

But, that wasn't my last encounter with ants. For a couple nights I was sleeping on a futon in a friends office. The first night I slept great. The sheets were clean and there was a fan right above me. I woke up in the morning feeling refreshed etc. Until I realized I was covered in ants. I freaked out and took a shower. After showering them off I didn't think about it again. That night the same thing happened except I didn't sleep so well. All night I felt ants crawling over my body.

Well, when I woke up, I took a shower and promptly forgot about it. Finally, after three nights of poor sleep and ant covered mornings, I decided to do some investigation. So, I moved all my junk out of the way and lifted up the futon. Nothing. Then I decided to lift up the sheets. Sure enough there were hundreds of ants nesting in my sheets. I cleaned them out and slept well the rest of my time on the futon.