Le falta un tornillo al cura... y al Sebas

As I type this from PCV Sarah’s site, the unbearable caucophony of church bells ringing assaults my ears. I had previously been told (but didn’t quite believe) that the priest in this town is off his rocker, and rings the bells of the church at all times of the day (and in the middle of the night) for no apparent reason. Rumor has it he has an alcohol problem, and the last time he rang the bells it was the middle of the night and he wanted people to help him clean up the empty bottles in his room, ahead of an impending visit from his boss. Heaven knows the reason for tonight’s call to arms.

But that’s neither here nor there, which coincidentally is the theme of this post. Without further explanation, here goes.

A few weeks ago, I was awakened by a text message at midnight; I got up to drink some water from the kitchen, and my foot started stinging. I turned on the light, only to find that I was completely surrounded (and being bitten) by the large ants that are normally seen outdoors but don’t venture into houses.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: I’m in a rural town, it’s normal for ants to come eat any food that’s been dropped on the floor. I accept that. But bear with me. This was no normal ant incursion. This is what a normal ant incursion looks like:

=============================================================================
                ------------------\
               /                   \
[food source] /                     \
                                     \
    [me, watching]                    \
                                       ------------------[point of invasion]
=============================================================================

That is, a single-file line that sometimes doesn’t take the most direct route to the food, but is normally not too far off from it.

This is what it looked like that night:

=============================================================================
 [tiny food source] ------------------------------------------------------
- - - - - - - - \ ---- / * * * * \ ------------\   \ ---- / * * * * \    |
\ ---- / * * * * \ [me, getting bitten] - / * * * * \ ------------\      |
 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [point of invasion]
=============================================================================

In other words, there was one single-file line that went to the food, but the ants participating in that line were the minority. For the other ants, THERE WAS NO PATTERN. My first thought? Probably what anybody would have thought, something along the lines of “This looks a lot like each ant is executing a greedy algorithm looking for a local max (a piece of food), with random restarts and a huge number of instances. OW MY FOOT.”

As you can imagine, I found this a bit consterning, and I took a few minutes to kill ants off my legs and think about what my plan of attack would be. I decided, like a good ‘Merican, that the best approach was to attack them with the fury of 1000 bald eagles. I busted out the bleach, mixed it with water, started in a corner and worked my way out, killing everything I saw.

While I feel like this was a fundamentally sound plan, the fact of the matter is that it took about an hour and a half to kill everything off and catch the stragglers as they meandered out from my walls in a drunken (probably due to the chlorine fumes) daze. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure the chlorine got to me too, as my memory is a bit fuzzy at this point.

I recounted this story to a friend of mine the next day, and he told me that the same thing had happened to him the night before. Apparently, this is a normal occurrence; the ants go crazy every once in a while and just swarm randomly (I can confirm this, as my first thought upon being invaded was to step outside to avoid them—only to find that there were even MORE ants swarming on the sidewalk, as far as the eye could see). This is known in the area as “the night that ants clean house.” Apparently, if you just leave them alone, they will kill all the insects in your house, take all available food they find as their tip, and vacate the premises before sunup.

So, if I had just gone back to bed, the result would have been exactly the same, and I would probably have more brain cells remaining (stupid chlorine). The More You Know.

Breaking news: It turns out that there is a Thursday mass here, so that would explain the bell-ringing. But I stand by what I said, and that pastor is still crazy.