Comment: Invasion of the flying ants – Gulf Digital News

Comment: Invasion of the flying ants – Gulf Digital News

There’s an army in our study, complete with a full air-borne division, and they seem very attracted to cricket. This is not the ‘Barmy Army’, the famous travelling supporters of the English cricket team; this is a home-ground, Bahraini battalion of six-legged invaders. The ants have arrived, and they are swarming over my husband’s cricket pictures.

I am normally in awe of ants. They are focused on very important and mysterious jobs, and their weight-lifting ability puts human Olympians to shame. They are impressively organised, maybe because their communities are headed up by females. This sounds like a good plan for the world.

As a child, I was mesmerised by flying ant day, which always seemed to arrive during a particularly lovely spell of warm weather, and I was a bit disappointed to learn that ants take to the wing over several days rather than just one agreed by the queens of all the colonies as I had imagined. Whether today is designated flying ant day, week or month, the creatures in our study are freaking me out.