Alate

I learned a new word today...

a⋅late

–adjective Also, a⋅lat⋅ed.
1. having wings; winged
2. having membranous expansions like wings
- noun
3. the winged form of an insect when both winged and wingless forms occur in the species

Remember all those flying ant-things that always fly around light sources usually before it rains? Well, we had an entire swarm of 'em here in the house!!

Yup, ganyan nga. Grabe, I never saw so many of them INDOORS! I'm saying probably a thousand or so! :P Mom told us to kill the lights for a while and hunkered down in our rooms, emerging later on to find that they had totally disappeared... Strange.. Well, not really. Apparently they all decided to drop down anf lose their wings, leaving behind a lot of debris on the staircase. As I helped mom sweep the wings (and the wingless creepy-crawlies), we discovered that we had a minor termite infestation going on! This was quickly remedied (I hope by well-placed sprays of Baygon insect killer, or would serve as a stopgap measure for the meantime.

During the time our staircase was abuzz with the sound of a thousand flying insects, I noted that the streetlights outside had no insect activity whatsoever, which was pretty strange since they are usually more on the outside than indoors. My curiosity was piqued, and I combed the internet for information regarding the famous "gamu-gamo" immortalized by the great Dr. Jose Rizal, and this is what I found out..

1) Apparently, the term "gamu-gamo" locally used for these flying things is acutally the Filipino term for Moth

2) Having discovered fact #1 and seeing that gamu-gamo was a dead end, I then looked up information on termites and ran into the term "alate", which referred to the winged form of the termites that are related to the propagation of their species. This info correlates with the presence of the newly-discovered termite infestation, but how come there were so many?... I guess we'll have to find out tomorrow...