I'm sure you've seen some of these characters around lately. I was at Aquafit yesterday at the Port Moody Pool and the pool was full of them! The poor instructor (who was really good and led an excellent workout) was being swarmed by them -- in her mouth and eyes and all over her. But she kept going to her credit. When we arrived at the pool, there were only a few of them and so I rescued them and put them on the pool deck outside of the water, but once the workout started, more and more arrived and by the end of the hour, the pool was full of them!
I know that these ants appear in large numbers at certain times of the year and I remember previous summers doing aquafit and trying to save them by getting them out of the pool. Apparently, they get wings when they're ready to mate. The females will lose their wings after they've successfully mated and then they proceed to build a nest for themselves and their babies. The males die shortly after they take to flight, whether they mate or not. They're just regular ants -- Wikipedia calls them "pavement ants", I think. It also says that they are beneficial, providing food for birds and helping in the garden. They won't be around for long and now that I know about them, I'm not as freaked out by their numbers and I guess I won't worry too much about those poor individuals who get stuck in the pool, although it seems pretty tough to think that some of them get this one chance to fly and then, their lives are over. Is that a metaphor? I think everything's a metaphor or it could be.
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