Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    




NIGHT OF THE ARMY ANTS

By Mary Mackey

copyright Mary Mackey, 1994
First Published in "I Should Have Stayed Home: The Worst Trips of
  Great Writers." Edited by Roger Rapport and Marguerita Castanera;
  Bookpassage Press, Berkeley, CA.

(All royalties from this book are donated to OXFAM AMERICA, the
 international development orgnization.)


     My sister and I picked a good hotel: a clean, place with

whitewashed walls, a quaintly thatched roof, toilets that worked,

and hot water.  It was a far cry from the other places we had

stayed during the two weeks we had been in Guatemala.  The room

in Chichicastenango had been windowless, smelled of urine, had

two straw-stuffed pads instead of beds, and sported a family

toilet planted neatly in the middle of the courtyard.  In Flores

we had made do with a tin roof that leaked, chattering bats in

the rafters, and spoiled pork for dinner.  I had spent a good

part of the past six years living in the jungles of Costa Rica

and I prided myself on traveling tough, but my sister--who was

new to the tropics--had had it.  She had a stomach ache (soon to

become a case of amoebic dysentery that would ultimately land her

in Intensive Care--but that's another story).

    "For God's sake let's pay whatever it takes to get a toilet

seat that doesn't fall off," she begged.  She had been a great

sport, but she was getting that glassy look in her eyes that

meant she was about to crack.  It was the same look she had given

me when she was twelve, and I invited her to Mexico City, picked

her up at the airport, and drove her through a riot, so I gave

in.

    That afternoon we checked in to the nicest hotel in Tikal

and spent the rest of the day in the park climbing the pyramids,

watching the howler monkeys, and admiring the phosphorescent

blue butterflies.  At dusk, we even spotted a timid, deer-like

agouti peering out of the brush.  That night as we lay in our

comfortable beds in our ever-so comfortable hotel, the jungle

frogs sang us to sleep.

    I woke in pitch blackness, some time around midnight with

the distinct sensation that I Was Not Alone.  Suddenly, like galley

slaves rowing to the same beat, a host of little things all bit

me simultaneously.  With a howl, I catapulted out of bed, and

staggered around the room, slapping randomly.   Roused out of a

sound sleep, my sister went for the lights, but there were no

lights.  The electricity had been turned off at ten--not an

uncommon occurrence in the tropics where fuel for generators is

expensive.

    "Help!" I yelled as I continued my St. Vitrus dance around

the dark room, slapping, stumbling, tripping over the luggage,

and generally doing a great imitation of someone who had lost her

mind.  Being a level-headed sort, my sister located a flashlight,

turned the beam on me, and to our mutual horror we discovered

I was covered from head to toe with ants.  Snatching off my

nightgown, she began to beat me with a towel, smashing the little

suckers while I went on hopping and screaming.

    When I was de-antified and a few degrees calmer, she

directed the flashlight toward my bed.  It was seething like an

anthill that had been kicked in.  Thousands of ants were crawling

across the pillow and sheets, but that wasn't the worst of it:

there were more ants streaming down the wall of the room in a

column four or five feet wide and several inches thick.  In many

tropical buildings, the walls don't go all the way up to the

ceiling.  The ants had located the ventilation space and were

rushing through it in unbelievable quantities.

     "Looks like a goddamned waterfall," my sister observed as

the slick, black column poured down the wall.  "In a few seconds

they would have gotten to my bed.  Thanks for sounding the

alarm.  I can just imagine our skeletons lying there, picked to

the bone."

    Summoning what little dignity I had left, I brushed the

smashed ants off my naked body.  "New world army ants don't eat

people," I announced.  My voice grew shrill.  "There is nothing

to fear."

   "How do we make them go away?"

    "We can't.  When the army ants march, the local people

gather up all their food and move out of their houses until

they've passed.  The ants are a kind of pest control service.  By

the time they're done there's not a snake, rat, or bug left."  I

was always one for appreciating the balance of nature.

    "Son of a bitch," my sister said.  "You mean we're stuck

with these things for the rest of the night?"

    By now the other guests in the hotel were all awake, and,

convinced we were being murdered, they had begun to pound on our

door.

    "Are you two okay?" a voice called.

     We dressed, went out, and explained the ant situation to our

fellow tourists.  There were perhaps fifteen of us altogether,

from Germany, France, Canada, and the United States, most young,

most experienced travelers, but no one had been through an army

ant invasion before.  Since the entire staff of the hotel had

mysteriously disappeared, we were on our own.

    Sleep being out of the question, we arranged ourselves on

the sofas in the lobby, pulled up our feet so the ants wouldn't

crawl over them, and waited.  A few people tried to make ant

jokes, but no one was in the mood.

    "I have to go to the bathroom," a German woman

announced.  Several of us picked our way to the door with her,

but by now the bathroom floor was a heaving mass of ants.  It was

clear they were going to troop through every room in the hotel.

 We waited.  Above us, the thatch began to make soft rustling

noises. Suddenly there was a plop, and a scorpion about the size

of a human hand hit the floor running. Fifteen tourists screamed

simultaneously. No, make that fourteen. There was one guy, who

wouldn't have screamed if you'd put a red hot poker to his

forehead.

     "Scorpions!"

     "Are they poison?"

     You bet they were.  The old hands insisted that the little

ones were even more poisonous--even fatal--but that was small

consolation.  These were big, their bites could land you in the

hospital, and by now they were falling like hail, dozens at a

time, driven out of the thatched roof by the ants.

     "Umbrellas!" a guy from Chicago suggested.

     We rose like one person, fled back to our rooms, seized our

umbrellas, opened them to keep off the scorpions, and retreated

to the lobby, where we sat, hunched up against one another,

like people waiting for a bus in a rainstorm.  Occasionally a

large scorpion would hit one of the umbrellas, bounce to the

floor, and scuttle away, but it never got far before the ants

mobbed it.  After two hours of this, we were so tired we could

hardly sit upright.  It was then that a man whose name I never

knew, but whom neither I nor my sister will ever forget, made one

of the most generous offers one human being has ever made to

another:  "The ants haven't made it to my room yet.  If you and

your sister would like to try to get some sleep in my bed, I'll

hold an umbrella over you."

    We checked him out.  He was perhaps twenty-eight, thin, with

dark brown hair, and he had a face that inspired confidence.

Reassured that this wasn't some crazy plot to seduce both of us

in the middle of an ant invasion, we agreed.

    For the next few hours, my sister and I lay side by side in

his bed as he sat next to us, silently holding a large black

umbrella over our bodies so we wouldn't get stung by falling

scorpions.  Somehow against all odds we fell asleep.  When we

woke the umbrella was neatly furled, and the chair was empty.

He was gone and so were the ants.
  

    

Marvelous!
  

    

ack!!!! that makes me never want to travel again!
  

    
(applause!)

Just reading that made me itchy, Mary.

so, what's this about vampire bats?
  

    
(It's okay to hide it - Engaged handles it just fine.)
  
  

    

When I was living in the rain forests of Costa Rica, a vampire bat tried to
crawl in my sleeping bag one night (they use their wings to sort of scoot
along toward their victims.) I got a quick look at it before my flashlight
suddenly gave out, so there I was trapped with a possibly sick (as in
rabid)bat scooting toward me to suck my blood. Brooohhaaahahahaha.

I hunkered down in the bag in 95 degree heat with it pulled over my head and
hid out until it was light enough to see and avoid the bat which kept
crawling over the bag most of the rest of the night. Later, I realized there
was a good chance that a bunch of the critters were hanging right overwhere
I had chosen to sleep. I don't mind bats, but I draw the line at feeding my
blood to them. (Plus, when a vampire bat bites you, you can't feel it
because they inject some kind of anaesthetic; so that makes them even more
sneaky and dangerous.
  

    

Eeeeuuuuwwwww.
  

    

I'm constantly amazed at how able you are to maintain your sense of humor 
about scenes like the Ant Invasion, Mary (not to mention your sanity!).

If it's okay to talk briefly about another of your novels - did you 
actually go to the then-Soviet Union to research your novel about ballet?
  

    
oh my...

You've had some pretty harrowing experiences, Mary. Yet you keep going back
to places where you're likely to have 'em again. Are you a danger junkie or
something?
  

    
(paris slipped in while I was composing my thoughts)
  

    
So do you get advances to cover all these interesting trips?:-)
  

    <scribbled by mm Fri 2 Jul 04 10:14>
  

    

I did indeed go to the Soviet Union to research "A Grand Passion", my novel
about three generations of women (grandmother, mother, daughter) all
involved in ballet. The first time I went (in 1969) I had no idea I was
going to write a novel set there. I was in graduate school at the University
of Michigan, in the process of getting a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature.
(The topic of my thesis was the influence of the Darwinian Revolution on the
19th century novel: English, Spanish, French, Russian). To improve my
Russian, I applied for a program that allowed 12 U.S. graduate students to
go to the then-Soviet Union in exchange for 12 Russian high school English
teachers who were allowed to come study at the U of M.
  

    

I spent the summer of 1969 studying Russian in a world almost totally cut
off from the West (in fact, I didn't even hear about Woodstock until I
returned in September). I saw ballet in both Leningrad and Moscow, learned
quite a bit about Russian culture, and became fascinated with the country as
it had been just before the 1917 Revolution. Subsequently, I turned down the
offer of a fellowship to go back to the Soviet Union for a year of graduate
study in Russian language and literature (I couldn't stand the thought of
the winters-in Moscow nylons freeze to your legs if you aren't careful and
under the Soviet regime there wasn't a tomato to be had unless you grew it
yourself. Also, the political repression was unpleasant and somewhat scary.)

Later, when I set out to write a novel about ballet, I realized that I had
already done extensive research on Russia-the precise place where ballet
flourished in the late 19th/early 20th century. I visited the Soviet Union
for a second time in 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin wall, because
I was planning to write a novel about Stalin's granddaughter, but that novel
never quite came together. Still, who knows? I saw Stalin's hometown in
Georgia which was as surreal an experience as one can have, and perhaps
someday I will use it in a novel.
  

    

I pay for the trips I take out of my own pocket because I need to write the
novel (or at least part of it) to get an advance, and I can't do that until
I have seen the locations I'm writing about.

Am I a danger junkie? Hmm, good question. I'm definitely a junkie for the
rainforest and the tropics in general, which tends to expose one to danger,
but I don't seek out high risk situations. I learned long ago that if you
want to do "Adventure Travel" you don't need to pay a lot of money to go
with some company that feeds you catered meals and guides your every
footstep. All you need to do is take off for somewhere remote, planning to
spend as little money as possible. Or, alternatively, you can just look
where I am going and go there too. I seem to stumble on adventures and
disasters (or maybe they stumble on me). It's all part of the writer's life
to travel hard (and be under machine gun fire every once and a while).

(sorry about the scribble of post 87. It was full of typos)
  

    
Sounds like it's not "danger" you're seeking, but that it's a side effect of
the off-the-beaten-track adventures that to pursue, Mary. 

It's hard to believe that two whole weeks have gone by since we started
this conversation. It's just flown by! I want to thank you, Mary, for
joining us, and you, Libbi, for so ably leading the conversation. Though
we've turned the virtual spotlight onto another author there's no reason
this discussion has to end. You're welcome to continue as long as you're
able. The topic will remain open indefinitely. 
  

    
And you're also welcome to join me talking to Francesca De Grandis
next door about The Modern Goddess' Guide to Life.
  

    

It has been a pleasure, Cynthia. Libbi, thank you for being such a wonderful
interviewer.
  

    

You're quite welcome, Mary.  Thanks to you and to Cynthia for the 
opportunity to introduce you and your writing to the folks who read this 
conference!
  

    
Great stories, Mary! To read, that is, not to experience...

I won't even ask in what way the Triple Border connects to the plot of
SR; I'd rather read the book, which I plan to do shortly.

Just out of curiosity, when have you been to Rio, and do you have any
plans to visit it again?
  

    


I was in Rio a month ago. I don't have any plans to visit again for a while,
but some time in the future I will return. I love Rio.
  

    
Drop me a line next time you do, I'll treat you to a filé Oswaldo
Aranha and a few chopinhos at Lamas...
  

    

ooh, sounds great, Calros. obrigada.