Little Surprises

It is quite normal to see bugs in every part of your life here in El Salvador. I have become so accustomed to seeing spiders, ants, wasps, etc in almost every part of my house- shower, toilet, bed, wall, desk, EVERYWHERE. Any person in the US who comes with a healthy fear of moving creatures soon acquires a sort of numbness to them….you just stop noticing them all together.

I remember during my immersion days visit when I went to visit an experienced volunteer for a weekend during my training. I remember the girl, Liliana, telling me that it’s wise to move things often and clean behind things because you never know what is nesting there. I heeded this advice somewhat but really I haven’t had too many problems in my two years. I once found a scorpion in a box that I was storing stuff in. And, I have ants that live under my door hinge which never go away no matter how much I douse them with raid, rum, or vinegar. But tonight, I had an even better surprise.

I am gradually cleaning out my room. Throwing away things here and there, packing some stuff, putting stuff in a give-away pile. Well, there’s my box that someone shipped me which for the past year or so has served as a sort of filing cabinet on top of my desk. I’d cleaned it out once a few months ago but tonight I decided to see if I could weed a few more things out. That’s when I found it. The giant giant ant nursery. That’s right- not only was the nursery filled with hundreds of eggs that looked EXACTLY like rice but it was also giant ants. At the moment when I found them I thought two things: 1. Did I spill rice in there at some point? 2. So that’s why for months I have had random giant ants in my room! Shortly, thereafter I decided that nope, there was no way I would have spilled rice back there and F! I needed to get that damn box out ASAP. So I dragged it out to the patio where I tried to get as many books out as I could. All the while, I kept feeling the damn ants crawling all over me! It was a sickening feeling. They weren’t on me at all but I was in such a mental state that seeing them crawling all over made me feel like they were actually on me. After getting the books out I tried to push the box outside but it tipped over as I was trying to do it…goose bumps rose all over my body as I imagined the eggs falling out all over my porch. I managed to tip it out though and the few that fell out I quickly swept out. Ugh! It reminds me of dissecting the frog in high school. Mine was female and had thousands of eggs inside it…grossed me out for months.

Oh El Salvador, you are full of terrible little surprises from computer viruses that make me lose all my information on my USB drive after two years to giant ant nurseries. I shall miss all of it and none of it.

Late addition: This same thing actually happened to me several weeks later with a box I packed to ship home. I screamed and my neighbors ran out to see what was wrong. (I screamed because something was crawling on me.) I told them and my neighbor said that it is old belief in ES that when that happens it means that you have made one half of a pair of twins angry...essentially karma for messing with a twin. I don't know any twins I could have made mad recently so I am going to rule that out at as the cause....