Tag Archives: wildlife

Message From the Ants: You Are Powerless Against Us

TRY TO STOP US!

Though we love our new apartment, one of its only flaws is the continual potential for an ant infestation.  The potential was realized this afternoon, when I heard a scream in the roommate’s room. Concerned, I rushed in and happened upon my roommate being held down by a giant masked ant with a knife at her throat. “Man,” I chuckled, “this infestation is both exceedingly ugly and worse than I thought.”

But really, there was a literal river of ants flowing from the balcony door, around the corner, and into a crack in the wall. I’m not great with numbers, but there must have been at least one or two, maybe millions, or something like thousands of ants endlessly streaming into the wall, carrying an unknown substance to their queen for her to feast on. Powerless to stop the flood, we left the apartment and discovered upon our return that they had vanished, only one or two unpopular ones left behind. As we commented on how bizarre the experience was, I found a tiny note in the corner of the room near the ants’ escape crack. It was typed out very clearly and left little to the imagination, except for picturing the tiny ant computer. Here is the note, as it was written but slightly larger and edited for profanity.

Dear pathetic human scum,

I assume by now you’ve noticed we have no regard whatsoever for your existence. It matters very little to us the arbitrary barriers you have placed on our earth, or the packaging in which you wrap our food. You cannot keep us out. We are tiny and there are millions of us. You are large, pasty, gangly, and one. You can’t even crawl up the sides of tile wall or build tunnels into the earth. Did you really think your two opposable thumbs would be a match for us? The thought is laughable. Between us, we have billions of limbs. In one hour, we could make a statue of President Obama  the height of the Empire State building out of our severed limbs and then dismantle it. You could write three emails.

Do you know how many possible entrances there are in your room alone? What about just the area surrounding your bed? Thousands. There are thousands of ways for us to invade in the middle of the night, swarming across your face, tickling your nostrils until you wake up and begin screaming. As you thrash about clumsily you might take some of us, but you can’t actually believe this will affect anything. You might be bigger than us, but our combined weight is a number your puny brain is incapable of comprehending both because of its size and because it is rendered in kilos, so I’m not even going to waste my ant breathe. The trick we performed earlier was meant to send a message: you are weak and powerless. Your degrees mean nothing to us. Bam! We’re there. We’re a river. We’re a thick, writhing mass that makes the carpet look alive. Boom! We’re gone. You have no idea what happened. You’re in the dark. You’re drooling, clueless, as you will remain.

We are in the walls. We are in the ceiling. We have this entire place surrounded and if we ever have the cause to investigate a sugar or pie situation, there will be no mercy. We will throng and our queen will feast. Bring chemicals if you must, just know that where one falls three rise to take his place, each a little crazier than the last.

Best regards,

Patrix “7 leg” O’Norkle, ant representative and part-time gym attendee (credit: MB)

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There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother

It is a mosquito.

An entire day passes in my apartment and I see no Cairo wildlife, i.e. insects of various sorts, dogs, cats,

This is the enemy

weasels, or small badgers, but as soon as the hour approaches when I consider beginning the long nap I take at night, my old enemy confronts me once again. Indeed, as soon as the very thought ekes its way through the fabric of my mind, I hear the familiar high pitched whine that signals the presence of a creature desiring to partake of my flesh.

Nothing could be more dangerous than this foe. Left unattended, I am faced with the frightening reality of awaking in the morning to as many as five or six bites upon my feet, face, and claws. That is a reality I do not wish to experience.

And yet, night after night, the dastardly devil proves nearly impossible to kill. I have only successfully killed one mosquito in my time here. In that case, the little lady had feasted too heartily on the blood of yours truly. Slowed down by the weight, she could not avoid my slowly approaching, slightly moist palm which after the fact was graced with a bright smear of body fluid complemented by mosquito appendages. Of course I ingested it, making my revenge complete.

The war continues, however, another thirsty female eagerly filling the last one’s place. How does it hover so slowly and closely to my ear and spring away with the precision of a gazelle when I go to slap it? What mad science is this that the mosquito is perfectly adapted to inflict both physical and mental pain in its victims? Why do I leave my windows open and breed mosquitoes under my bed?

The only solution is continual wakefulness until every mosquito is gone. A disguise must be sequestered. I have work to do.

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At least we had the stuffed parrots

I’ll be honest. I’ve done nothing interesting for the past 48 hours, unless you count cooking dinner and going to a hotel bar interesting, in which case both you and I need to get out more.

The roomies and I made #lentilsoup last night and the tomatoes we used tasted like they came from the fields of heaven. It was like I had never tasted a tomato before. Every tomato will now turn to ash in my mouth as I remember the sweetness of the day my eyes were opened. But really, they were pretty good.

Afterwards, we went to the CASA fellow get together at the Happy City hotel rooftop lounge. They had done a fair job of wrapping the entire place in strands of lights, however, I only counted three that were actually functional. This slight fault was made up for by the strategically placed stuffed parrots hanging from the ceiling. There were also things that looked eerily similar to precious moments figurines, but alas, they were of a different make.

One of our critical mistakes of the evening was not eating the #lentilsoup we had made, since we thought there were going to be free appetizers which could easily turn into #freedinner. The free appetizers turned out to be a lone bowl of beans and so we simply drank dinner (beer)/starved until we got some late night Egyptian t-bell before going to bed. It was fun. We talked a little about jelly beans.

There will be more adventures later on, I think. I suggested going to the pyramids last night for an illicit after-curfew excursion but there was hesitation for some reason. I was like, “I’ll bring my saber so it’s not like safety will be an issue.” But there were no takers. And then I screamed, “No really, I have a freakin’ saber right here,” and I whipped it out of my purse but everyone got all weirded out. People can be strange.

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