Long March of the Cik Ru

As it's approaching yet another new year let us now turn our minds back to the Cik Ru.

The Cik Ru has made many appearances in these blogs, often under the Sekolah Ladang where they were buried in sand. I mentioned once that we used to fish them out of their conical holes with a strand of hair. How we caught them was one thing, and what we did with them was another. And the answer is mostly, nothing at all. They were just fascinating creatures with a round body and pincered in one end. They had six legs which they put to good use, burrowing deep into their inverted cones. Once I was even rude about the Cik Ru, saying that they were of no use to anyone. I now regret that unwarranted solipsism, forgetting that there may well be Cik Ru bloggers who've indeed questioned the relevance of men, who are of no discernible use at all, and whose little ones sometimes appeared beneath the school-house wreaking havoc with their lives with strands of hair.

For a while I thought I was veering off the edge because no one else spoke of the Cik Ru, while here I was on my knees in sand, looking, and even writing a paean to it. But help came just in the nick of time. Joninho wrote in to say that this creature that was a Cik Ru to me was a Cik Mek to him. He wrote:

"I didn't have the clue what cik ru was but ur description of its habitat of inverted cone shaped hole gave it away. During past times, we often caught cik mek@cik ru but we had to catch it quickly before it went deeper into the soil. The interesting part was we creatively invented 'laga' or fight between cik mek with poor 'kerengga' in a bottle. Sometimes cik mek won and vice versa but we were kids and we didn't know it was sinful to torture animals.."

And then d'arkampo wrote in to say:

"Ambe ingak agi Cik Ru..duduk dalang pasir. Kalu nok ngail cik ru, ambik bunga loceng and peel it. Use only the stigma/pistil and put it in the sand.
To other readers, no..we don't eat Cik Ru."

Now — happiness — I've found another Trengganuian who also baited the Cik Ru in his childhood, and he is Prof Madya Dr Mat bin Zakaria who mentioned the Cik Ru in his long and interesting reminiscence of his Trengganu childhood. And he even has the proper name for it, cecurut, and I'm ever grateful to him for that.

From there I have been able to trace the glorious path of the Cik Ru Cecurut through many cultures and many folklores. In zoological parlance, the Cik Ru is a myrmelrontidae, a classification derived from the Greek myrmex (ant) and leon (lion) because in many cultures, our Cik Ru is the Ant Lion, an insect that waits and waits in its conical hole for an ant to drop in. And then zappp! the ant is dead, held between its pincers. So who says the Cik Ru has no purpose at all in life? Its business is to devour ants, and that's that.

The Ant Lion is apparently the larva of a winged insect of the order neuroptera which includes dobsonflies and lacewings. And what's more, in the United States, these voracious ant-eating larvae are called doodlebugs because of the "doodle" tracks they leave in the sand.

So, here again is the paean to the Cik Ru, and it's well worth it. What a trouper, dancing those doodles in the sand, what a resilient member of an ancient order of insects with a complete metamorphosis!

Cik Ru, rumahmu
ddalang pasir, bbawoh tanoh;
Macang mana mu dok ssitu,
tiba-tiba ada ccokoh,
ddalang lekok pasir ceru
mu pegi buak rumoh.
Cik Ru asal mu
boleh korek tapi susoh,
sebak ddalang sejaroh Teganu
mu duduk lama ddo'oh,
bila tanya orang tua, dang-dang kena jerkoh:
"Buak ape nak tahu, dak buleh makang kedaroh!"

Follow the Cik Ru Trail:
Cik Ru mentions:
With Ru My Heart Is Laden.
Gonen With the Wind
Lightness of Being

For the complete paean to Cik Ru, go here
For a comprehensive account of the Cik Ru and its lore, go to this remarkable Cik Ru page.