When I spied a big, black ant crawling out of the yellow plastic bag in which our fruit stall vendor had just placed my 1 kg of rambutans, I was creeped out enough to spend a few seconds whacking it off the bag --- much to the vendor's amusement, no doubt --- before I would take my purchase from him. Ants are certainly common in our corner of the tropics, but the gleaming black beady-eyed creature that sought escape was no garden variety house ant. It was large enough that I could see its legs individually wriggling with malicious intent and I was not going to have that thing in my house.

Little did I know that my bag of rambutans was veritably infested with 20-30 of that ant's comrades --- all extremely feisty and tenacious, all extremely itch-creating and all irrefutably evil. I didn't discover this till a couple of hours later, when I encountered a couple more as I was peeling the rambutans. I promptly took myself back into the kitchen, where rambutans were hurled into the sink, in the vain hope that I could wash the pernicious vermin down the drain. But no, they have Spidey-webbing, those pesky ants, because under the harsh dousing from the tap, they clung steadfastly to the plastic container and would not be moved. I had to squish several that attempted to dart up my arm!

All in all, more icky of an experience than I was bargaining for when I stopped by the fruit stall on the way home. Last week's rambutan purchase was ant-free, so I had nothing to prepare me for this. I was still feeling creepy-crawlied when I got into bed last night.