I wrote something really lame, about five months ago.

(Yes, I know. “Can you be a little more specific, please?”)

It had to do with insects. And my observation that … Abu Dhabi didn’t seem to have many insects.

I’ve written some poorly thought out posts in my time … but suggesting that any corner of the planet (aside, perhaps, from the polar ice caps) is short of bugs … I must have had bees in my bonnet.

True story. A moment ago I got up from my chair to spray about 100 ants that were running in circles not three feet from where I am sitting. About 95 of them hadn’t been there five minutes before.

Turns out that Abu Dhabi has plenty of bugs. Of course.

Here is where I went wrong.

When I wrote that I saw almost no insects in Abu Dhabi … we were living on the fifth floor of a hotel. With the windows always closed.

Not even cockroaches like walking up five flights of stairs. Not even houseflies are adept at getting in the front door of a hotel, catching the elevator and sneaking into a hotel room in that moment the door is open.

But living in a ground-floor apartment with an overgrown patch of grass within feet of my front door … in a neighborhood with open dumpsters on every street, standing in blazing heat eight months a year. Well, of course, we have bugs.

I am most definitely bugged, now.

Was it January when I complained about the gnats? The ones who live in, say, decomposing wood … like the lower half of the cabinet under the kitchen sink. They were a huge problem for a while. The gnat population is down now, a bit, three months later, but only after twice-a-day sprayings of Windex (kills ’em on contact; the ammonia, I guess) on the rotting-wood portion of the cabinet. (Which continues to crumble.) Oh, and we kill maybe a dozen a day by clapping them between our hands. Yes, that’s dignified.

Our issues are bigger than gnats, now.

Ants are the most numerous. And the thing is, I don’t even know what they are doing in here. We’ve been good about keeping food off the floor. No crumbs, no spilled sugary stuff.  Yet they seem to swarm in the wee hours of the morning.

Maybe they’re nocturnal, because it’s so hot here? Anyway, these ants are smaller than the little black ones in California, and much, much faster. In a 100-inch dash, these ants would win by about 15 seconds. They can flat sprint. Stepping on one, even when you plan to, is no sure thing. They’re that fast and elusive.

Last night, I looked down, and at least 100 ants were just inside the door — which, sadly,  has a crack of about an eighth-of-an-inch at floor level. So the ants just charged right on in.

Normally, it’s just scouts … a dozen, spread out, looking for whatever. But of late, they have come in … in waves.  Look away, and they have arrived by the dozens.

This morning I had an inspiration. Beyond the “hey, that door is just too easy to walk through.” Maybe the outdoor plant we had by the front door was somehow attracting them. The theory being that if they weren’t coming in for food they were looking for water, and when we watered the plant, by the door, that drew them within inches of the interior.

So I moved the plant. And was thinking, an hour ago, “Hey, maybe that worked …” Till about five minutes ago. And now I have more blue Windex on the floor and 50 dead ants.

I don’t know what the deal is now. Maybe they’re just coming in to cool off. Chasing the AC. The rest of us do.

We have more exotic creatures, too.

–House flies. Smaller than SoCal versions. Slower, seemingly dumber. But very skittish. They seem to sense a swatter even as you’re raising your arm. Very hard to kill.

–Beetles. Seen only a few of those in here. One was walking down the wall a few nights ago. I spoke to it. “Dude, you can’t be in here.” It was about an inch long, narrow, and a sort of yellowish color.  Outside, I’ve seen the occasional big black beetle. Not in here. Yet.

–Odd,  tiny crawling bugs. Imagine rolly-pollies … but 1-100th the size. Almost invisible. But I see them up and around in here and attempt to squish them. Can’t be good.

–Spiders. And almost all of them are a very curious kind. A hopping spider. Yes. It crawls, but it also can hop. Which makes it hard to catch. You close in on it … and it jumps about an inch high. Which is probably the human equivalent of a six-foot vertical leap. I have killed several of those, as well. We also have some other variety of spider because if I look directly overhead I can see 4-5 flying-type creatures snared in a web. But not the Abu Dhabi Jumping Spider kind of spider. A smaller, almost flesh-colored thing.

I should have made the connection between “bugs” and “Abu Dhabi” long ago. The newspaper has run several stories of late about fumigators,  pest-control guys. In the emirate of Abu Dhabi, alone, more than 150 companies are licensed to kill pests. Not that all of them know what they’re doing, and some kids have been made sick by poisons inside living quarters. But the fumigators would be out of business if there weren’t bugs that needed… fuming.

So … never again will I declare a city, a country to be bug-free until 1) I’ve lived in it for at least half a year and 2) I’ve lived at ground level.