Food from the sky.
Once, when my grandmother was feeling sorry for herself, she summed up her run of bad luck by declaring, “If it rained soup the storm would catch me carrying nothing but a fork.” From boyhood on, the image of a soup storm has stuck vividly in my mind. Tomato would be a treat; cream of asparagus an affliction. Years later, when I was a kindergarten teacher I enjoyed sharing with my students a wonderfully illustrated book entitled Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs that described a town in which food arrived in the form of precipitation and townspeople watched the evening news to learn what cuisine the next weather front would bring. Recently, for the first time in my life, I actually witnessed food falling from the sky and watched wide-eyed as men, women and children scooped it up by the double handfuls.
Shortly after the sun slipped below the horizon and twilight became nightfall, a multitude of insects descended on our village. Not a mere swarm; something more awesome and foreboding. We were set upon by a google of flying termites, each the size of a small dragonfly. The termites could be said to be “flying insects” in the sense that if I fell off the barn roof I could be called a “flying man”. They lacked any aerodynamic stability on what was obviously their maiden flight; they dipped and keeled like kamikazes destined to crash.
The insects appeared to be drawn instinctively, or perhaps spiritually, toward any glowing light or shining object. The swarm’s mass quickly doubled and then doubled again as colonies from across the countryside joined the assault. Billowing clouds of insects enveloped the light hanging above my guesthouse door and dimmed its glow.
Common sense told me to run for cover. Nothing this intense and frantic could possibly be harmless. But where to go? I wasn’t about to open the door to my room and allow squadrons of termites to follow me within. And did I need shelter when all around me joyful Lao people were running not away from, but toward the invasion?
People were dashing down the steps of their homes carrying pans, buckets, bags and other containers to collect the fallen insects that soon covered the ground. I judged it unlikely that heat from bulbs could be wounding termites in the massive numbers that were accumulating under foot. More likely the insects, in struggling to reach the shining lights, had exhausted all their energy reserves and were crash landing in fatigue. Or, perhaps Management had neglected to communicate any goal to the colony beyond reaching a glowing light; now, millions or billions of born followers were milling about, asking one another, “What are we supposed to do next?”
The most ambitious villagers positioned plastic washtubs on the ground beneath the lights and poured water into the containers. I watched one mother and her children skim handful after handful of floating termites from the water’s surface. As they scooped the first victims into plastic bags, other insects in equal numbers fell stunned, confused or exhausted into the basin.
I asked my friend Vilisack whether he had ever seen anything quite like the scene before us. He grinned and said, “This happens every year.” He explained that most Lao consider the termites a tasty snack: food from the sky. When dropped onto a hot oiled pan, the insects’ wings immediately fall off, and their bodies quickly fry; then, the cook winnows the batch to separate the bodies from the wings. Vilisack told me that most Lao eat the fried termites unseasoned, but that he prefers to sprinkle them with salt. When I asked him what they tasted like, he paused, searching for words in his limited English vocabulary to describe the flavor. Finally he offered, “It’s a lot like bamboo worm.”
Reassured, I retreated to a dark corner of the courtyard, and although hungry for dinner, resolved to take an hour or so to study both human and insect behavior. I had an experiment in mind, but regretfully, I didn’t have the candle that I needed to conduct it. My thought was to light a candle and time how long it would take the termites to attack, overwhelm, and extinguish its flame. I was certain that the swarm had the numbers and enthusiasm to accomplish the feat.
About an hour after the invasion began, it reached a climax and began to abate, so I headed for my favorite eatery to have a late meal. I walked in darkness. Although the tide had clearly turned, the insects were still so numerous that I didn’t dare shine a flashlight. When I got to the restaurant I was momentarily alarmed: I was starving and the place was closed! I cussed myself out for lollygagging with the termites so long. Then I noticed that within the darkened building there appeared to be shadowy figures moving about. I tentatively opened the front door and peeked inside. At several tables diners sat eating in the dark. Suddenly, I understood. The swarms were still so thick and invasive that if the restaurant turned on its lights, customers would be driven from their food. Better to eat in the dark than to not eat at all.
I ordered my meal from memory of the menu. When my food arrived, I ate like a blind man, pushing meat and vegetables onto my fork with my fingers. Eventually I gave up the fork altogether, and like my year-old grandson, deemed everything on my plate to be finger food. At one point, a frustrated tourist, unfamiliar with the restaurant’s limited cuisine, demanded that the lights be turned on so he could consult the menu. The waiter flipped a switch, the lights went on, and within seconds every bulb attracted termites that had been lurking in the dark. I joined other outraged customers in giving a collective groan that intimidated the demanding tourist into silence and emboldened the waiter to darken the room again.
Across the street from the restaurant hangs a bare bulb that serves as one of the few street lights in Oudomsouk village. As I ate my meal, I stared at the light and studied the swarm of glistening termites swirling around it. I was reminded of streetlights, snowflakes and the harsh beauty of a Wisconsin blizzard. Then, I spotted two children on the ground beneath the light scooping insects into bulging plastic bags. For a moment I was back in my kindergarten classroom reading Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs to my students and enjoying their giggles as they imagined the preposterous idea of food falling from the sky. That’s when I remembered my unlucky grandmother caught in a soup storm with just her fork. And that’s when I thought, “Could these termites be making me homesick?”