3rd to 7th June 2008
We left mid morning for Kubamitwe village.
We arrived to find this little creature in the rat trap – Deane had had it running under the bed for the last 2 nights he had been at the village last week. (We usually get at least one rat in the trap each visit, but this time Deane has cemented, hopefully, all of the holes where the rats can enter)
At 1am the next morning Deane heard Alex stamping around outside and said are you ok, Alex called Simon and said there’s an army of ants – the red biting ants!!! Ready to attack. There were literally millions of them all lined up from across the road ready to attack the house. They apparently just run up the walls and enter the house through every crack and hole they can find then sweep through the house, biting as they go. Thankfully Alex needed to go to the bathroom so we got up and they mixed kerosene and water and sprinkled it all over the ants to stop them attacking the house. They just get in your shoes as you walk over them and start biting. Then I thought, ok I’m going over the grass to go to the loo, no way was I going into the longdrop where I couldn’t see! Anyway little did I know, for a couple of seconds anyway, that where I chose to go was right in the middle of the ant army!!! I was sitting down and they were just climbing and biting up my legs, bit of a laugh now but it wasn’t at the time!!!! Ants under control we went back to bed, bit scary thinking of what it could’ve been like having the ant army through the house!!
Got up the next morning and went to the pantry (just a large sealed box) to find the sugar had been spilt and there were hundreds of sugar ants running around the inside of the box – just about covered the bottom of the large box, luckily everything was either tinned food or sealed, apart from the sugar spillage, so that was the next ant mess to clean up!!! In NZ ants were the bugs I hated the most, NZ ants are NOTHING compared to the size of the ants here, whether sugar or red biting ants.
Next morning Deane woke up and was COVERED in bites from his shoulders to elbows on both arms,(at least 50 or 60 bites on each arm) his arms looked a mess. Apparently bed bugs this time, not mozzies!!! So that was the next project. We got all our bedding outside, I washed all the sheets to everyones beds and then but the mattresses in the sun to dry off any thing that may be in them, hate to think what could be crawling over the mattresses. Anyway something good ALWAYS comes from something bad – we got a new bed!!! So we are off the bricks and sticks on the floor and now sleeping in a proper bed. It was so nice and comfortable and because we seem to be spending more and more time there hopefully we will both sleep much better too and Deane wont have to endure the bedbugs anymore!