Life of the Rice Weevil

You don't think much about all the pests around us at home or outdoors, and when it comes to these bug encounters, we just want to get rid of them. But there is a real ecology at work wherever we find them. When I first began my corridor planters with fresh pots of plants, these all died in a month, and again I bought a fresh batch of plants and my green-fingered neighbour tried to explain to me in Teochew that I should only water them once a week. I followed his advice and all the plants died within another month! I was going to give up except that it was plain curiousity and vanity which made me persevere. Common man, I said to myself, it cannot be that hard to get some plants alive. In my experiment to own a small aerial corridor of green plants (technically to reduce my carbon footprint in this life), I wondered quickly how many more species of plants and such specimens need to sacrifice themselves.

Before I left the nursery, out of plain exasperation, I decided to let my naivete work and asked the supervisor, "How often to water, huh?" She smiled and quickly said: everyday, for these potted plants, in the afternoon or any time. I realised then that outdoor plants in pots are a thirsty lot. Then the plants thrived and when my neighbour came by to say I was wetting the plants too much, I nodded politely and then thanked him, hoping he will mind his own business for a while.

The plants then developed various diseases, manifesting themselves with all sorts of damage. I bought some plant insecticide - organic of course and over time must say these are plain nonsense. I tried some Baygon, which meant that my mint, basil, and other herb plants are not going to be used in my tea pot. The Baygon worked! But soon after, I found the plants began to ail and die, as if from chemical poisoning. Now, all this could sound very distressing and I am only compressing 3 years of horticultural ambition into these few paragraphs!

Then, in a separate incident, after I saw a few house lizards roam happily across my wall chewing up a few ants and such, I said to myself, now that pet is doing his job! Immediately I realised that what could be killing the plants were my harsh efforts to deploy various means to try and help it. For instance, if I over enthusiastic about a few more grains of fertilizer, the plants would react and show stress - discolouration, frail foilage, etc - and I had to be careful, like a mother who knows exactly what the plant needs and when. Then I knew immediately that the best way to keep the insects away was letting the spiders do their jobs. When a few black and brown spiders were noticed around my planters, this time, I made the effort not to get rid of them.

If you look at my plants today, considering that these are all two year old or more in these tiny pots, placed outdoor along my corridor, you would be amazed how I have graduated from an urban chemical fiend to a friendly eco horticuluralist! A great deal of these insects do their job, surprisingly, if you just let them. And if there are just too many of them, the neighbour sparrow or lizard takes care of it.

Just this morning as I was doing my laundry on my beloved BOSCH (I swear by this brand), and stoopped to scoop the detergent out of the carton box, I was surprised to find a single rice weevil on the top of the soap powder, walking around on the grains inside the plastic bag as if Lord of the Manor. This was unusual in two ways: firstly, I always opened and closed the bag by folding it and clipping it, secondly, I never leave the bag open for long at any one time. So, how did this weevil get in there, and could there be something inside the detergent which these can thrive on from the manufacturing plant to my home. After all, this was washing machine detergent with all its additives, and not my regular rice bin (I have none for the longest time) or some food or cracker box (none in my kitchen either). So, how did this little bugger get there.

Here's where this blog really starts: it just struck me that we ignore a great deal about the hows and when or whys of things that happen. I looked at the little weevil and lifted it out of the detergent and wonder if I should clinically dispose of it, let it loose, or be some punitive monster-god and squash it. I let it loose on the sink to see if it had survived the detergent. Then I got very curious about how much we know of these weevils, their lifecycle, living habits and contributions in any way to our ecology.

Of course I know it now as Sitophilus oryzae and that it has a short lifecycle of 5-8 weeks during which it can be very active. It also flies and can sniff out rice, other grains and food to get into our homes, pantry and food stowage containers. It was interesting to read about these weevils, which when I was young and had to sort the rice grains out for the family rice cooker, we would separate all the stones or spoilt rice grains, and put all the weevils aside. My brother Chris and I would sometimes try to imagine these as our own flea circus but the weevils never do what we want and our human brains seemed unable to penetrate theirs with powerful mind-controlling projections! I looked at the weevil in my sink closely and wondered how life on earth has become so wonderously varied and filled with patterns of behaviour and complex structure in form and range. So, the life of this weevil is right there before me.

But it is the result (clone) of one other weevil which reproduced itself in some grain kernal with many others and in essence, this one is in fact many. This perhaps separated my own being from these weevils, and even though we sometimes seem overwhelmed by the vastness of life and think ourselves as insignificant pests populating the earth, ravaging resources and being nasty to each other, I was glad to be reminded that we are all not living solely on our urges and instincts and that our will and self-control is one of the better parts of our humanity and that shape and define our destiny, personal and collectively.