What Lies Beneath?

From where I live, I feel the thud of human feet striding the earth as if they own it, paying scant attention to what lies beneath them – unless of course, those feet belong to people intent on extracting oil or water or precious metals.

I, by contrast, spend most of my time underground.  I am an African termite.

Small, yes, but mighty in numbers. In fact, I scarcely ever think of myself as a separate insect. We are a collective. We burrow, unseen, in huge colonies as deep as 18 feet below the surface. Each colony houses up to one million of us.

We work our way up and out, eating wood wherever we find it. We erupt through tiny cracks in solid concrete.

Termite mound breaks through concrete floor of classroom in South Sudan.

Yes, it’s true. We devour wooden shelves and school desks. We squeeze into tightly lidded tins to shred the currency you thought was safely hidden. We can eat the wooden branches that frame a hut’s entrance, leaving only the fragile shell of paint that once covered the lintel.

At a certain time of year, we rise en masse to swarm like locusts. Then we are often trapped and eaten as a delicacy,  fried like snacks or boiled into soup. A fine source of protein.

My lifespan is brief.  You might call it fleeting. But you will remember me by what I leave behind: dung towers (a.k.a.  “mounds”) made of soil, our saliva, and the poop we excrete. Often our mounds dwarf all the trees and structures nearby.

Termite mound in South Sudan.

Impressive, eh?  Tread lightly when you pass by….