Day 6 Critters: Termites

As anyone who has ever lived in Africa will tell you, when it rains – the termites fly! I don’t have a clue about exactly why, maybe all the termite eggs hatch all of a sudden when they are covered in water? I know this is going to sound really strange, but in one of the most rural villages we visited in Northern Tanzania oh-so-long ago, there were these little clouds of termites with beautiful translucent wings exploding out of the ground to start a new life almost like a confetti explosion on a concert stage.
Flying up and up into the light.
New life bursting forth in rare beauty.

Back to reality, here they all ended up on our front porch by following the light. The porch light. Joel was a helper and swept the pile of newborns up for us while I took pictures. Yes, they are alive btw. They try to fly away and soon their 4 wings fall off and they just walk. We stuck them in a bucket, knowing they are food to most people here.
We fried up a few just to say we did.
Pretty airy really.
Cheese puff minus the cheese.

Quite frankly having tufts of wings floating under my doors is not my fave. Later in the day our gardener gently inquired about the contents of the bucket and we happily gave him the whole thing to take on home.

This week we heard a friend from the rainforest complaining about the high price of fried termites in the market these days…

We’re not in Kansas anymore Toto.

Guess we never were…

But we’ll pretend we are for a few hours on Sunday and have a tasty barbecue picnic on a friend’s lawn. Happy Fourth of July wherever you spend it!