The little protists, smaller than a tenth of a millimeter, are part the rich community of gut microbes that help termites turn wood into digestible sugar (which is why the pests can eat up the walls of a home fairly quickly).
In the 1950s, the termites turned up in Charleston, South Carolina.
Termites had turned their joists, in her words, "into straw".
Just why their mother abandoned Termite and Lark and turned them over to her sister Nonie is the central mystery in this novel, a mystery that Lark longs to unravel and that Nonie keeps from her out of fear that the truth will prove too painful to bear.
"These tiny termites have managed to turn rainfall as little as 50 millimeters per year into a continuous, permanently livable ecosystem," he says.
I haven't got a clear enough view of what it would be, because it would have to be something so different from humans that I'm not sure why bother, any more than turn everybody into termites or something.
It turned out that they were termite mounds: more precisely, bronze castings of termite mounds found in Ghana, Africa.
Bill Gates, take note: that doesn't necessarily give you a range of 1,000 feet as the crow flies (or as the termite burrows), because home wiring twists and turns inside the walls.
Not only is the boy unable to see, the cataracts that obstruct his vision turn his eyes pale blue, like Termite's.
But it turns out that at least one termite species has adopted an alternative.
