Hormigas Locas

Large callused hands with flat split thumb nails. I notice dirt from the mornings work packed tightly in the gaps between nail and skin as he reaches to shake my hand in greeting. My hand disapears in the mass that is his, but I find comfort in its gentle yet confident grasp. "Buenos días William, puedo ayudar hoy en la finca?" I returned. The past week I had been on the move with my supervisor Merlin, getting the lay of the land so I had not gotten the chance to help out my host family with their farm. My host father seemed uncertain about my ability to wield a machete but handed it to me anyway along with a guaba tree branch about the length of my arm. At the branchs end it naturally hooked. I guessed that I would be needing this tool in conjunction with the machete. Arriving to the place where many plants would surely meet the blade of my machete I noticed many large ant hills. Getting a closer look I found many red ants carrying small cuttings of leaves into their home. William pointed out another gi-mungus ant hill next to a small bush that had been completly stripped of its leaves. The red ants seemed to be some sort of carpenter ant that would set up shop right next to its food source, exploit it, and then move on to the next. "Muy muy mala para café," William said refering to the carpenter ants.

The hillside we had to clear was full of tall ones, short ones, wide ones and skinny ones. Plants of all colors and origins would soon be hooked by my guaba branch, slashed and then tossed downhill. I don´t know why but I felt like a kid again; like when I first came across my dads various knives he kept hidden from me. Maybe it was a mistake for William to give me that machete, we would soon find out. Spliting up, I began on one side of the hill and William the other. We worked the hillside systematically, meeting in the middle every twenty minutes and then moved farther up the hill to repeat the process. We hooked, slashed and tossed until we reached the top of the hill that was lined with a living fencline of trees. These were beneficial trees and could not be chopped. Before I could move quickly and hack without much percision and the job would get done. Here I had to manuver my machete in between trees which slowed me down. This one bush was giving me a lot of trouble, keeping my feet in the same spot for about thirty seconds... thirty seconds toooo long becuase when I looked down at my foot it was covered in thousands of pissed off black ants. I had been careful and looked for ant hills everywhere I stepped but these ants seemed to be living in an unmarked location. Their home was of finely cultivated soil with pinholes for entry/exit points. I called to William for help but he was too far to hear and what was he going to do anyway. It was up to me. I ran in circles and scraped my machete against my boot with no results. I had to drop my machete and use my hands since the ants had begun to travel up my sock. Luckily the ants didnt bite my hands but later that day I found one of them near my upper thigh that got a couple of good stings in before I crushed it.

Later that evening when I returned home I opened my door and flipped on the light switch to find 5 cookarochas perched upon the various items of my desk. My notebook, jar of peanut butter, the plastic spoon I use to eat my peanutbutter, reading material, etc. Their antenni were going haywire trying to gather information about the new presence in the room. Taking a step towards them all movement halted and that scene from Jurrasic Park began to play out in my head, but with cocaroaches in place of people and me in place of the T-Rex. Each cocaroach was speaking in distressed rico suave accents, similaiar to that of Antonio Banderes.

"I don´t know... what should we do man, that thing is huge!"
"Wait! Don´t move! It can´t see us if we don´t move."
"... its walking towards us... "
"Shit Run! It can see use!"

They had scattered before I could squash them with my book in hand. But at that moment I could really only laugh thinking about life from their perspective. When I turned off my light for bed I could hear them moving about like little plastic wind up toys, clicking a clacking across the floor and my desk. Thinking back to later that day I had remembered my host brother telling me that cocaroaches like to eat the dead skin and eyebrows off your face. Broma(Joke) or truth, I was not about to let my eye brows become some rare delicacy for those bastards. I grabbed my headlamp and ran into the kitchen to where a spray bottle of venino (posion) lay. Returning to my door I could hear them scampering around from outside. Flinging my door open like a drunk Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven I began shooting madley like they had just killed my best friend. I dont know why, but that day I was living vicariously through many different characters of my movie viewing past. There was no mercy. I tracked down every last cocaroach and sprayed them dead. Needless to say I slept well that night.