Kurukya(Ant-lion): Escaping the Angle of Repose

Vol 3. From Sa Kabilang  Umboy –May 2010

Nell Cenizal

have a swift  and unnoticeable summer this year. I went out yesterday and rain started to fall, that marks the end of summer, Sigh!, again? no beach getaway for this year?. I’ve been figuring my age and count the summer I ‘ve been to.  Well I guess filling up my fingers and toes  combine and doubling  it, Ill be nearing its mark.  Its a busy quarter of the year, and to this month of summer I neither been out  in a beach nor to a resort to cool down my weary head.  My weird mind start to dwindle recalling all the summer I spent. Maybe  if I will have a drink with you and even stupefied by alcohol I could only named 2 summers, where I was happy about. The summer of  1979 and my Boracay trip of 2009. I’m not here to blog about Boracay, for God sake everybody knows  that place.  It is about one summer in my life that openned my mind to weirdness of nature. To these age still lingers  to my curiosity about that insect , up to now I still don’t know that species was all about. Until my eyes was caught by addiction in PC Games like Half Life 2. Where I finally knew the actual name of that creepy thing — Ant-lion or doddle bug we used to call this “Kurukya” in Manlayo.

Ant-lion Larva stage

There was a wooden  house , old and dilapidated near the shore of Manlayo just adjacent to our old place. It was owned by Aling Toyang and Mang Jose  who happened to have son who was  one of my friends. We used to call him as “Bakang”(Sakang) – (maybe he was called the way he gaits with bow-leggedness deformity or  condition called “genu varum”) .  The house had tall pillars built to keep out  from sea water during high tide.  Its  downstairs  were sandy playground  where we used to learn how to somersault and other beach sand playing activity. Every summer we use to play there and enjoy the rest of afternoon passing the time without a care in the world.

Ant-Lion Pit traps

Nothing had fascinated me during my childhood than the odd looks of things that surrounded me. That  creature so unique that  its features dwell  in my memory . Lots of  conical sandy pit about 2 inches deep laying side by side at the sandy downstairs of my friends house.  I knelt to look closer, curiosity had stricken me as I approached those conical pits. Some holes looks just freshly contoured, some looks abandoned with ant’s exoskeleton remains in it. At the center of some its pits where the “Kurukya”  laid their traps against the ants as their food. In some places Ant-lion where named Kumong-kumong, babuy-baboy or Kurukotok.  its odd names just add up how that insect looks like.

Antlion Life Cycle

About maybe thrice as large as ant some are just about the size of rice kernel. Its head has large ant’s jaw-like that  uses to kill its smaller prey. If you look closer you find its fusiform body with hairy  skins that cover almost entirely . One intelligent feat of this creepy crawler is laying out traps and diversions both against its prey and from us.

Ant Lion Pit Close up, showing slopes and angle of repose

Antlion funnel

Some of its  diversions were on maybe 5 – 6 pits of its domain you can only find it, it one of the funnels, tricky huh!. We were fond of playing them in our hands, we giggled ones it gets to our palm not that it titillates us with the sensations of its legs, but how it moves oddly backwards using 3 pairs of legs.  Its powerful legs and coordination of its thorax, aid them in digging these conical pits in no time. If I am a mechanical engineer or inventor of power movers, I will look no further but to study this amazing creature.  If you watch them how they dig and proportionate their size to a back hoe or a pay-loader. They can be scaled to a machine digging about  half the size  basketball court  in just matter of minute.

Antlion Macro shot by Jonathan Numer

Wikiying the other night I found  Ant-lion  is just a larva stage of one metamorphosis of a beautiful dragonfly-like insect  –ant-damselfly. Amazing life cycle that a product of its evolution from Mesozoic era.  If ants have souls I have to pray for their forgiveness for I had always made them as bait  just to watch them as it  falls on its inevitable doom unable to crawl out from the angle of repose. Due to its natural uniqueness and its physical oddity it was created as villain character  or monster in modern computer games like Half-life 2.

As I close my eyes today writing about it and feel the breeze during that summer day, the smiles of my childhood friends feeding those ant-lion. Its more than  the usual spider fighting, it was like our game-fowl day.  I still saw their faces vividly to my recollections, but names are vaguely reappearing to my head.  I don’t know If they have a facebook or internet access to recall us that we were once playful about this creature.

I don’t expect my every follower( if I have one) to relate to these. I’m sorry you find me in the weirdest summer of my life.  We have to gently blow each pits as we utter the name “Kurukya! Kurukya!”  repeatedly in every funnel as if were calling a chicken to feed. That  was one of the bizarre words that I cannot erase in my mind. Googling its name I find a similar guy writing about it in Tagalog and he is pretty inspired even wrote a poem about it. Maybe he is just another guy like me who valued his childhood  more than a treasure box. here is the poem link http://kurukya.i.ph/blogs/kurukya/2008/09/23/kurukya/

Ant-damselfly adult

I seldom go back to Manlayo and will probably getting more hardly ever. Months ago I started learning something about photography, though I still lacking of gadgetry to capture Macro shots. I still dream of buying a Macro lens that  could capture close up shots of insects like them.  Sadly I still need time to find them also If they were any sandy place that they could live near Manila.

“Some of my friends who used to live here in Manlayo have found our odd place as an “angle of repose” that battling the life out of it is like crawling out of a quick sand. That maybe statistically right considering too few really found a way of getting out of there  and back as ant-damselfly proudly displaying their wings of accomplishment as a gesture of their  pride. My friend, not all success in life comes in the form of money and possession. If we were all ant-lion we would have transformed Manlayo into a pit of success capturing all fortune towards it helping those who were still crawling  out of it.”

Just like the ant-lion metamorphosis stage, to  larva, to being ant-damselfly . There were no traceable appearance you can view to recall that it is once like “kurukya”. People and your childhood friends may change, I hope some of my friends that I used to play with , has able to escape and defied  poverty we all rooted from.  After all unlike ants we have the varying ability to defy each slopes of  problems and escape our angle of repose.