Thursday, January 6, 2011

Congo: Ant invasions!!!

I just read part of The Poisonwood Bible where there is an ant invasion that absolutely creeped me out. eeekkkkk....makes my skin crawl!!!! Cousin-Roomate and I had our own bug invasion (on a much smaller scale) a few years ago when we had a fly invasion in our old apartment - we killed 150 in a night and it was the closest I've ever been to being in a horror movie. Sooooo, with that being said, the ant invasion in the book was plague level and completely terrifying! In the novel, a character describes the invasion by saying: "Every surface was covered and boiling, and the path like black flowing lava in the moonlight. Dark, bulbous tree trunks seethed and bulged. The grass had become a field of dark daggers standing upright, churning and crumpling in on themselves." That sounds absolutely terrifying. I tried to find pictures or videos on line of ant invasions in the Congo, or even anywhere in Africa, and had little luck. That might be for the best...I have a feeling ant invasion scenes could be the stuff of nightmares for me. No thanks! It does make me wonder why there is no footage though. I suppose ants don't have regular migratory patterns, so you couldn't really guess where they would attack next. It also probably has to do with weather patterns I'd imagine, and I'd doubt many people in the villages would have any recording devices to capture imagery at the moment...although, maybe I'm misjudging the spread of technology to the Congo. Anyyyyways....I guess I can see why there isn't much footage available.

It was definitely interesting to read about though. The ants, which the locals in the book call Nsongonya, attacked at night. Man, that would make it so much worse to be woken in the middle of the night by ants biting you and invading your room and bed...eeeuuughh. The whole village immediately fled for the river, basically the only safe place. When they came back they found animal bones with all the flesh eaten off.

I wonder how often invasions of the magnitude happen?

3 comments:

  1. Horrible...that's all I can say.

    ReplyDelete
  2. ARMY ANT INVASION!!! Granted it's a Hollywood interpretation, but check out Charlton Heston's 1954 movie "The Naked Jungle". There are clips on YouTube including the finale, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he4fIw-g_wg&NR=1

    ReplyDelete
  3. Haha - that clip was hilarious/interesting! Funny to see a hollywood interpretation of an ant invasion, especially one of that era! Thanks, Dat! Ahhhh, Charlton Heston:) In the book I was reading they all went to the river to protect themselves, so it was interesting to see Charlton Heston's character using water as a weapon against them. I haven't heard of any other method of defense against ant invasions.

    ReplyDelete