The subterranean termite is a social, wood-devouring insect, invasive, destructive and below my cabin. And dead. Discovered about a month ago, its whereabouts were unclear for some time and the suspicion that it had been tipped off and had defected to another location was proven to be false, as was the rumour that it was acting alone. Responding to the probable end of the dry season, its operatives emerged from their hideout accompanied by many thousands of their family and friends, their families, their friends and families, neighbours, co-workers, soldiers and an investigative journalist from the CBC. As the swarms appeared they were picked off one by one by my crackshot sharpshooting assistant, P.A. Nasonic. A later attack by The Pest Doctor from Nanaimo using AK-47 assault rifles, hand grenades and residual pyrethroid insecticide ensured victory.

Yes, it’s true. Not content with sending me woodlice, fruit flies, carpenter ants, giant slugs, tent caterpillars, white pine blister rust, powdery mildew and pea moths, the Great Jungles of the Pacific Northwest have awarded me with their pièce de resistance, the western subterranean termite. But what is it? A quick search on the internet turns up intriguing results. I type “subterranean” and the first thing I see is “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, and learn that Johnny is in the basement, mixing up the medicine. Well he’s a little late in doing that now I must say, since they’ve been dead over a week and The Termite Man (recognizable by his broadly jointed waist and straight antennae) wanted considerably more than eleven dollar bills. And he wasn’t wearing a coonskin cap either.

As usual, the internet is a mine of information. Termites exude defensive secretions through holes in their heads, I read. They sometimes practice agriculture, live in nests lined with faeces, feed on dung, and are delicious, highly nutritious snacks. Why do I have the feeling that those last two qualities are mutually exclusive?

Termites it seems, apart from being pretty tasty, are actually quite useful in other ways, breaking down dead and fallen trees and other sources of cellulose in forests. Regrettably however, they are not knowledgeable arborists and may also attack wooden structures. “You mean they think my house is a tree?” I ask The Termite Man. “That’s about it,” he replies. That’s torn it, I sigh. And I’d been planning on getting one as a pet from the local Termite Rescue Society. “Harvey! Get down from there! I’ve told you before about eating the ceiling joists! Come to heel this instant!”

I also discover that termite colonies will fight each other as well as carpenter ants who are their mortal enemies. Well goodness if I’d known that I might have spared the 2007 infestation of carpenter ants, and kept them on the staff for their combative powers. No matter – the battle is – so far as we know – now won, and all I have to do is turn my house into a metal box to prevent their recurrence. If I suspect they may be planning a comeback I should “listen for the tapping of soldiers.” Hmm. That could be a tricky one. We don’t get many soldiers around here, but as in all the best folk songs I will tie a little string around my finger, put the end out of my room window and hope.

2015-10-14

So Dracula was Irish? I read it on the BBC website so it must be true!
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-51053870.
If you thought he was Transylvanian, have a look. According to Bob Curran, a retired lecturer from Ulster University, Stoker was interested in Irish folklore, particularly a Celtic chieftain called Abhartach who is buried between Garvagh and Dungiven in Co. Londonderry.

Did Stoker have Abhartach in mind when he created Dracula? Not a doubt of it, says Bob, who has written much about vampires, werewolves and leprechauns among other interesting creatures. And indeed the connection isn’t too hard to spot, but pay attention in case you miss it. It seems this Abhartach fellow was an all round bad egg and an almighty pain in the rear end to the local peasantry who kept trying to kill him. Time and again he would reappear, demanding bowls of blood. Clearly, cries of “get yer own!” and “what, again? That’s three times this week!” had no effect, and his demands continued until someone ran him through with a sword of yew and buried him upside down surrounded by thorns. And placed a very large rock on top of him. Well that told him!

I don’t know about you (that wasn’t meant to be a pun, by the way), but I feel like that particular method of dealing with someone a bit bothersome might just be worth filing away for future reference. I have therefore classified it as “Sword of yew, with upside down burial.” It will be somewhere between “shoulder, cold” and “tires, the letting down of.” A bit more serious than unfollowing someone on Facebook or deleting them from your contacts list, but perhaps not as devastating as adding them to the “Cute Puppies email list.”

It is a sunny, early spring morning and I am reporting from an isolated gulf island somewhere in the wild west. With only the clothes on my back, a selection of musical instruments, my trusty Mac and two cats, your bold and adventuring Daily Ant reporter has been taken to the very edge of human endurance that tested her survival skills to the limit. Yes, dear reader, I have made it through the night.

Foraging yesterday for food, water, a cleaner, fresher laundry experience and a shopping mall with interconnecting walkways, I found only a grocery store, a handful of restaurants and gift shops, and 4,499 people all engaged in their own desperate struggle for existence in the densely forested terrain. While basic needs can be met here, people have little or no contact with the conveniences of pollution, landfills, multi-storey car parking or extreme traffic congestion, and all attempts to introduce these luxuries have been met with war-like cries and volleys of poisoned arrows.  

Forty days and forty nights I have wandered in the wilderness and found no evidence of an Imax. These rugged island dwellers have to make do with concerts, plays, pubs, art galleries and museum exhibits, markets in the summer, beaches, parks, ocean views and beautiful sunsets. No-one knows how they do it, for few return from this place. Indeed, despite being advised that there is no charge for leaving the island, I have opted to remain in an attempt to document how these hardy folk manage to live under such challenging conditions, with no traffic lights or highways, flyovers or rapid transit metropolitan rail systems. People get by with only beachcombing, swimming and kayaking, studio tours and craft fairs.

Encounters with locals are liable to take place all the year round in a number of different locations, for an extensive network of hiking trails and paved roads penetrate the deep bush here and local guides are available to lead you through the back country in Gertie (the community bus) or the island taxi. Artists are abundant, as well as potters, dancers, painters, writers and actors, to mention but a few. Farmers, tradespeople, consultants and other entrepreneurs can also be spotted making their living in innovative ways, and wildlife is everywhere, with raccoons, deer and domesticated dogs and cats just a few of the interesting mammalian residents you may meet on your daily excursions.

There are no airports here, no factories, no department stores. Yet somehow the islanders cope. Breathing in the cedar-scented air, hearing the wind speak and the conifers creak their answers, they find peace.
 
We will continue to investigate. 

2016-03-16

What to do today? Ah yes, finish putting the weatherstripping on the front door. I’ve been at it two days already but today could be The Big Day. I may even finish it. 
 
I come from a culture where women generally didn’t do “those kinds of things”. Women did the cleaning, the cooking, the washing up and the shopping, ordered the turkey at Christmas, paid the bills, remembered birthdays, bought, wrapped and delivered cards and presents, took their home baking to the neighbours and made dresses and cardigans for the whole family and looked after the children. Or like my mother, they went out to work – and did all of the above. But not “those kinds of things”. She was lucky – her mother lived with us and worked endlessly for the family too. She didn’t do “those kinds of things” either. Men did them. If a woman lived alone, single or widowed, she would probably have A Wee Man she could call on to insulate the attic, fix a broken window, replace a door lock or change a tire. Or perhaps even to put a plug on the new radio.
 
“My daddy’s an Esso Man. What does your daddy do?” my friend asked. “My daddy’s a Scottish Boiler” I replied, and looked at her. She looked back at me, puzzled. “What’s that?” I didn’t really know. “He takes us to school every day” I offered, but she didn’t look like she understood that any more than I did. 
 
I was getting warm though (if not as warm as a Scottish boiler). He did work for a company we called Scottish Boiler but he didn’t seem to have anything to do with boilers. He was an electrical engineer who inspected wiring in factories and did his paperwork at home. Like the dentist who doesn’t notice that his own family have cavities, or the gardener who has to slash his way to his truck with a machete while his wife calls “you will cut the grass when you come home, dear won’t you?” he didn’t feel called upon to demonstrate his skills at home. In those days UK wiring was a complicated business and we had a variety of electrical sockets in the house, old, new and in-between. Appliances didn’t come with plugs already attached. You went to the hardware store and bought your own, along with the correct fuse, after which you would wire it for the appropriate socket. 
 
Electrical tasks in our house were of course left to my father, who would veto any attempts I made to learn how to do things for myself, clearly terrified that I would burn the house down or kill myself. “Can you show me how to wire up this plug?” I would ask as a teenager. “Everyone in my class knows how to do it except me!” 
 
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” he would declare. “Here, give it to me.” I would disappear to play my guitar and come back later to find two of the three wires stuck into the socket with matchsticks. Unfortunately he failed to realise that I would copy him, which I frequently did. A little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing!

2015-10-17

The vagaries of old British plugs and sockets can be seen here if you’re interested:

http://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/British-plugSocket_history.html

Gabriola Island, British Columbia, to Sydney, New South Wales Australia on foot. We’ve all done it – well, perhaps not done it, but told Google Maps we wanted to do it. Haven’t we? Ok, maybe you’re not as barmy as I am. But I honestly did do this, and I know I am not the only one to have put a long walk or two into Google Maps just for the hell of it. If there is a Google Maps Robot Chappie out there collecting our route request data then he must have been shaking his little electronic head in disbelief at where all these wacky humans seem to want to go. In fact I think he may have spontaneously combusted, or at the very least his department has become seriously understaffed, because the database of long walks in Google Maps has been severely edited. Gabriola to Sydney is no longer offered, and nowadays if you want a decent walk you might have to settle for Singapore to Tromso, or Cape Town to Karachi.

But if you want to walk to Sydney from Vancouver Island then look no further! (And no cheating here – we’re talking about Sydney with a ‘y’ and not ‘Sidney’ on Vancouver Island.) I saved my 2012 GoogleMapalogue and can now share it with you, sharing being a fashionable thing these days after all. I carefully preserved it in aspic just in case it should come in handy. What’s that you say? You were just planning that very same journey yourself? Well that’s great! You should get there in time to do your Christmas shopping (next year). Google said it would take 175 days and 14 hours but I suppose it depends how many coffee breaks you want to take and how often you have to stop and shop till you drop (if you haven’t already) for new walking shoes.

This is a short stroll of 12,636 km, and

“…route includes a ferry”

(or two or three or ten). In fact there are
162 crosswalks
401 right turns
420 left turns
10 ferry rides
and 3 kayak trips across the Pacific

Of course the number of left turns might put you off but it’s probably not a good idea to omit them otherwise you might end up back where you started. Also:

“Use caution – This route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths.” I suppose it might be because of the 4,436 km of kayak trips. At least there weren’t any sidewalks or pedestrian paths in it last time I saw the Pacific. But look on the bright side – your walking shoes will get a rest.

Here we go then – Gabriola to Sydney, New South Wales. On foot.

1. Go north on South Road toward Lockinvar Lane – 1.0 km
2. Turn into Easthom Rd – 270 m
3. Take the Gabriola Island Ferry to Nanaimo – 5.7 km
4. Continue straight – 190 m
5. Turn left onto Front St – 350 m
6. Continue straight onto Esplanade – 60 m
7. Turn left onto Island Hwy/Nicol St/Trans-Canada Hwy/BC-1 S – 2.0 km

You did want all of this, right? Oh all right then, let’s skip to the exciting bits.

43. Kayak across the Pacific Ocean – 4,436 km  

Actually, there is a slight problem with this route (yes, just one). The directions stop at no. 500, leaving you marooned somewhere in… 

How’s your Japanese?

499. Turn left toward 磐田バイパス/国道1号線 – 950 m
500. Slight right onto the ramp to 磐田バイパス/国道1号線

After that you’ll have to ask.

2016-01-05

“Bog off, you maggot-infested fleabag” is not recommended.

From deciding how much of your owner’s favourite potted plant you can get away with eating, to whether or not it’s acceptable to throw up furballs at the feet of royalty, being a cat is a minefield of tough decisions. In our guide to Eticatte, we cover some of the dilemmas facing the modern feline.

AlterCATions
For many cats, paw-boxing is a default response to everyday problems. If another cat bumps into you, takes your sleeping space or eats your dinner it is considered quite normal for the victim to wop the offender in protest. This is understandable, and for many cats it is an instinctive reaction.

For the offender, however, the urge to apawlogise for the faux paw is not at all instinctive, and rather than apawlogising, they are quite likely to box you back.

A sincere apawlogy should always be offered if you have stomped on another cat’s dignity. Even if you don’t completely understand why they are so upset, it is only good manners. The apawlogy will be much more effective if you augment it with a head rub. Be specific. “Sorry” is of course purrfectly adequate, but a head rub accompaniment will do much to improve relations between you. “Bog off, you maggot-infested fleabag” is not recommended.

Going out to dinner
Cats’ Nights Out can be daunting, formal occasions that involve many ancient rituals. Be sure to study your invitation properly and do not remove your flea collar unless invited to do so. Do not be late. Remember, the second mouse may get the cheese, but the third cat gets nothing and moreover, may have to clear away the remains of the meal (and as you know this will consist only of empty and well-licked dishes). On no account should you charge under the table and get tangled up in the white tablecloth while your host is in full flow telling his favourite story about being chased up a tree by a shaggy dog. No matter how attractive that little kitten in a cocktail dress looks.

Introductions and greetings
If someone is introduced to you and says “how are you?” then be content with “fine thank you,” and do not embark upon a detailed description of your recent furballs or what that nice, new vet said about your scabby ear. It is distinctly bad form.

Someone else’s kittens
Do not pick up kittens just because you feel like it. Remember that if you pick up someone else’s kitten by the scruff of its neck in a high class restaurant and walk out with it, eyebrows may be raised. However if the temptation to do so is irresistible and you find yourself out on the street with a strange kitten between your jaws, do not panic. Simply return it to its mother by dropping it on the ground in front of her and rolling over on your back. On no account drop the kitten into her teacup even if you do think it looks cute.

Discretion
A well-bred cat should be demure, modest and reticent. Always respect the privacy of other cats, and do not ask them about their sex life or what brand of cat treats their owner buys them. Remember that real life is not like reality TV or a soap opera. Humiliating your fellow cat is not the way to glamour and glory, and you should avoid behaving like you are in an episode of “Desperate Tabbies” or “So You Think You Can Run Up Curtains?”

2016-01-10

Gulf islands are mysterious places. When you go to sleep at night you have no idea what you will discover when you wake up the next morning.

An overnight sensation

There is no doubt about it. I am old. I tried to blame the cats this morning for moving the floor further from my bed but they protested their innocence most vociferously and I feel I must believe them. As I struggled down from the heights of my bed to the floor beneath thinking wistfully of parachutes, I considered the possibilities. Ground subsidence? Bricks? That’s it! Bricks! But no… there were definitely no bricks underneath the legs of the bed and I couldn’t recollect hearing any sort of rumpus in the night. Therefore I say again – alas, I am old.

But I’m not just any old. I am Gabriold. As a resident of Gabriola Island I insist upon the proper terminology. We are an island, as anyone who has tried to walk here will testify. The water goes all the way round. We have a distinct identity and this is not something that happens overnight. When I came here first I was quite a different person to the one I am now, but that newly arrived islander seems to have got off the Welcome Wagon somewhere between the Quickstop and the Gertie bus stop. The first year I lost the make-up, the second year the perfume, the third year the hair dye, the fourth year the wristwatch, the fifth year the jewellery and the sixth year the cellphone. 

To the non-islander all of this may sound a bit unlikely. How can you lose so many things in such a small place? But it’s not just carelessness. It’s a process of attrition that occurs almost without our knowing it. We are biodegradable, or well – degradable anyway. 

I had overlooked the ultimate end of all this. I must say I don’t mind a little biodegrading just to blend in with the landscape, but this Gabriold thing that seems to have crept up on me is altogether a scooter too far. I thought that by the sixth year I had shed everything there was to shed but no! The smart clothes still had to disappear and phut! There they were, gone. Well more or less. The office suit has been recycled into handy swimwear, the briefcase into a useful carrier of hacksaws, screwdrivers and other fashion accessories. The black, yuppie overcoat is a popular meeting place for my cats on a cold day. And somehow I have moulted my way into seniority.

Alarmed, I reported to my doctor. 

“When did you first notice this happening?” she said, and I replied that I thought it had been somewhere between the Chanel Allure and the sheep manure but it was impossible to say exactly. “Then there is something going round” she cried excitedly. “I knew it! I’ve been noticing this happening to a lot of people lately. Have you been to any events where you might have caught it? Meetings, markets, talks with slides, bring and buy sales?” I could not exactly remember. “Come to think of it”, I added, “I can’t remember where I live. Do you have my address there?” She did, and I wrote it down. “Are your bank credits regular?” she asked discreetly. “Not at all,” I answered. “I really have no idea of when they’re going to happen.”  She nodded knowingly. “And there’s something else,” I muttered. “I’ve been having problems with my balance.”

She reached for her prescription pad. “To be taken three times daily, after meals. Two parts levity, one part tomfoolery with just a dash of whimsy. Always finish the course.”

2015-10-29