I do get a few mails from fellow travellers and from time to time the questions are about how many mosquito, bugs and creepy crawlies there are in certain destinations. Here in Norway where I live we don't really have that much...sure, we have a few bees and wasps and some harmelss spiders. But when you come to tropical places you can meet a lot of "interesting" small creatures We had a funny experience on Langkawi by the way. We were out walking on night and all of a sudden I heard a scream from my wife Nikki who was walking right behind me. So I turned around to see what was wrong and she was just staring at me...so I started walking towards here and she was screaming "Don't come any closer"...I was starting to wonder what I had done wrong of course. Well, eventually she managed to speak and it turned out that I had a huge flying beetle stuck to the back of my shirt. There was a local standing near us and he picked it of my back We saw this flying beetle quite a lot...it was so big that it seemed to have big problems when landing hehe.
So are you afriad of bugs? Do you have any bug stories to share?
I'm not afraid of bugs per se, but I am nervous about getting a room with bedbugs and bringing them back home, and having to pay thousands to exterminate them. So far so good, though!
Not frightening but yukky just the same. When I was 21, my girlfriend and I camped out on St. John, USVI. We were right on the beach - it was paradise. Our first night, I reached into my backpack to get something, and my hand starting stinging like mad. Shining the flashlight on it, I discovered my hand (and the entire contents of my backpack) was covered with tiny fire ants that had infiltrated everything just from lying on the ground (on top of a dropcloth, too).
The name is appropriate: Eurycantha HORRIDA. They would fall out of the trees at night and are so big -- about 8 inches long -- that they made a crashing sound when they hit the ground. I would only go outside at night wearing a huge sun hat and I would absolutely run from the house to the car and back again.
In Australia I lived in a flat looking out over the tree tops in a park below. We had no screens on the door and one night a moth flew in to my living room, crashed into the stereo cabinet and stunned itself. It was huge. I threw a shoe box over it until I could decide what to do with it (I wasn't about to touch it!) but it came back to life and started fluttering under the box and just about knocking it over. So I put a large volume of an encyclopedia over it and it still shook the box. It took a week for it to die. One of the worst weeks of my life. The kookaburras would sit on my balcony railing waiting for meals! Fortunately, one never decided to fly into my flat.
And then there were the funnel web spiders (big black hairy poisonous things) that stand up on their hind legs and fight, and the wood spiders which were a good 3 inches across. And the huge flying cockroaches.
The name is appropriate: Eurycantha HORRIDA. They would fall out of the trees at night and are so big -- about 8 inches long -- that they made a crashing sound when they hit the ground. I would only go outside at night wearing a huge sun hat and I would absolutely run from the house to the car and back again.
In Australia I lived in a flat looking out over the tree tops in a park below. We had no screens on the door and one night a moth flew in to my living room, crashed into the stereo cabinet and stunned itself. It was huge. I threw a shoe box over it until I could decide what to do with it (I wasn't about to touch it!) but it came back to life and started fluttering under the box and just about knocking it over. So I put a large volume of an encyclopedia over it and it still shook the box. It took a week for it to die. One of the worst weeks of my life. The kookaburras would sit on my balcony railing waiting for meals! Fortunately, one never decided to fly into my flat.
And then there were the funnel web spiders (big black hairy poisonous things) that stand up on their hind legs and fight, and the wood spiders which were a good 3 inches across. And the huge flying cockroaches.
Ah, such pleasant memories!
You know what Earline? After reading that I will NEVER I SAY NEVER go to Australia!! My husband has an aunt that lives in Mudgee and is always asking us to come and we have talked about it and we have also talked about the bugs, I have quite the phobia when it comes to bugs, even my husband has said too bad about all those creepy crawly things in Oz might have to give that a miss...
Posts: 1375 | Location: Seattle - next is Isla Mujeres,MX in December, then its Paris in March, then hopefully England! | Registered: 02 May 2005
I do have a pretty gross bug story though. I met my husband on Ios and island in Greece and we had been going out for a month or so and we were asleep in his room one night and we both woke up because there was this clicking sound really loud coming from the bathroom. My husband got up and went to the bathroom and came back out as white as a sheet and said don't go in there...I was like WHAT? So of course I had to look. There were thousands I meand thousands of those big really big beetles they have in Greece, the ones that fly as well. The whole shower stall and floor of the shower was covered with them. UGH! Still makes me cringe, we got ahold of the owner and he just came in and swept them out the sliding glass door as if to say ok that's done. I'm like but there are going to come right back in. Well needless to say I never slept in his room again..
Posts: 1375 | Location: Seattle - next is Isla Mujeres,MX in December, then its Paris in March, then hopefully England! | Registered: 02 May 2005
After a long flight (NY-CHIC-OAHU-KAUAI) with delays and what seemed like years in a taxi trying to find our 'inexpensive' motel, we arrived somewhere around midnight. The reception office was dark and locked up. After shouting and banging for a long time, a light came on and a very sleeply and very reluctant fellow checked us in and gave us the keys to our pre-paid room.
With the time difference, we were over-tired and just wanted to get to sleep and wake up late in the morning.
We opened the door, flipped on the light switch, and saw hundreds and hundreds of huge roaches scurring for cover.
No way were we going to bother the front desk again! And we were in the middle of nowhere - we couldn't just walk off to another hotel.
So, we pulled a few chairs to the center of the center of the room, zipped our luggage tight and stacked them on the chairs. Then we moved the bed toward the center and tried to sleep - with the lights on all night!
Needless to say, we were up and outta there very early the next morning.
Posts: 351 | Location: Northern VA | Registered: 13 October 2004
The tropics are noted for their big bugs - with no winter t okill them off, they get to keep growing for as long as they can.
A week later on the same trip, we were staying in a rustic cabin on the other side of the island. It was very scenic and natural, with the shower outdoors in the sun and gaps between the planks of the walls. It was all very nice until we found the spiders and centipedes.
The spiders were about 6 inches in diameter (including the legs); the centipedes sometimes 10 inches long (and a bite from one of those guys, while not lethal, can send you to the hospital). The spiders like to hide on the bottoms of the toilet seat.
One morning we woke up to find a huge red swelling about a foot in diameter on the outside of my fiancé's thigh. She never felt anything, so we never knew if it was a spider, centipede, or something else. It was almost 2 months before it went away.
Posts: 351 | Location: Northern VA | Registered: 13 October 2004
Ah, yes. The centipedes. My husband I I were having lunch in a restaurant in Hanapepe on Kauai -- The Garden Restaurant or the Garden Isle Restaurant or something like that. Anyhow, they did have gardens inside the restaurant. We were sitting right next to a nice little garden arrangment when I caught motion out of the corner of my eye. It was a centipede about 14 inches long -- looking at me eye to eye! I finished my lunch, but I spent the entire time locked on visually to that centipede. It moved a little, but not much. To this day I don't know why I didn't get up and leave. Maybe I was trying to prove that I wasn't a wimp.
We saw them that size on the hiking trails up to Hanakapiai Falls off the Kalalau trail. I just gave them their room.
I pretty much hate bugs. In Italy we have of course the scorpion and spiders..thousands and thousands of spiders.Not sure where they all come from daily. My worst bug horror was at Hale Pau Hana condo on maui back in '88 when our son was just 1 and 1/2. I was awakened by Chris crying at about 2 am and to my horror he was covered by flying termites that had swarmed to our unit. There were termites everywhere, at least 2 inches deep on the carpeting, all over the crib,beds, furniture, tables. our clothes even in the closets and inside the dressers. etc. It was absolutely disgusting,so needless to say we woke the manager and changed rooms in the middle of the nite.still makes my skin crawl when I think about it.
They had just spent three weeks in Belize and were just chilling out in Europe before they went back to Canada to get back to work and the boring stuff.
Mark had been complaining of an itchy lump on the back of his neck for a while and was driving Anne mad at night with his fiddling and scratching. One night she lost her temper, grabbed his head and roughly took a look.
She soon backed off and screamed when she saw the lump move.
A couple of hours later I had the guy pinned down to a table whilst I cut a little hole in the lump and removed a 4 cm long cattle grub!!!
It was so funny. Anne nearly fainted and me and Sue were in hysterics.
We took the guy up to the hospital so as to get it looked at properly and cleaned out as i thought a bit had broken off on the delicate removal bit. Actually the little bugger hung on in there and it stretched quite a bit before it let go...
Anyway the hospital cleaned the wound and gave him some antibiotics.
Next day he was almost dead from an allergic reaction to penecillin......6 days in the hospital......
I wanted to clean the wound with whisky but the women insisted on the hospital.
This guy is now one of my closest friends, although he lives in Canada and we never see each other...
The cattle grub life cycle is fascinating...
The adult sits and waits for a passing mosquito and traps it. It holds it prisoner whilst laying a single egg on the proboscis of the mosquito.
Then it lets the mosquito go.
when an infected mosquito bites a person (or another mammal)the egg is depostited just under the skin where it hatches and grows.......and eats.
They had just spent three weeks in Belize and were just chilling out in Europe before they went back to Canada to get back to work and the boring stuff.
Mark had been complaining of an itchy lump on the back of his neck for a while and was driving Anne mad at night with his fiddling and scratching. One night she lost her temper, grabbed his head and roughly took a look.
She soon backed off and screamed when she saw the lump move.
A couple of hours later I had the guy pinned down to a table whilst I cut a little hole in the lump and removed a 4 cm long cattle grub!!!
It was so funny. Anne nearly fainted and me and Sue were in hysterics.
We took the guy up to the hospital so as to get it looked at properly and cleaned out as i thought a bit had broken off on the delicate removal bit. Actually the little bugger hung on in there and it stretched quite a bit before it let go...
Anyway the hospital cleaned the wound and gave him some antibiotics.
Next day he was almost dead from an allergic reaction to penecillin......6 days in the hospital......
I wanted to clean the wound with whisky but the women insisted on the hospital.
This guy is now one of my closest friends, although he lives in Canada and we never see each other...
The cattle grub life cycle is fascinating...
The adult sits and waits for a passing mosquito and traps it. It holds it prisoner whilst laying a single egg on the proboscis of the mosquito.
Then it lets the mosquito go.
when an infected mosquito bites a person (or another mammal)the egg is depostited just under the skin where it hatches and grows.......and eats.
Clive
That is the MOST disgusting thing I have ever heard, I have to Stop reading this thread, but I can't!
Posts: 1375 | Location: Seattle - next is Isla Mujeres,MX in December, then its Paris in March, then hopefully England! | Registered: 02 May 2005
Man, Clive! If I hadn't seen the Star Trek episodes where the Klingons were eating live worms for appetizers, I wouldn't have believed your story! (the green of this face represents how I feel right now! I'm with lesfaye -- I shouldn't be reading this thread, but "ah just cain't quit it"!)
Thanks for some interesting stories. The cattle grub sounds horrible I guess I can be happy about living in Norway where the spiders are quite tiny (and not dangerous), ants are tiny etc . I guess that is the reward for putting up with bad weather most of the year
I'm pretty fearless with regards to a fair amount of creepy crawlies. I haven't yet had anything crawl into me so the cattle grub story is a pretty disgusting. I should mention as a side note that we do have tarantulas for pets. Wonderful and amazing creatures.
My funniest bug story was when we stayed at Chichen Itza in Mexico. We were sitting in the patio having breakfast when we heard this ping like something metallic had dropped. We looked over and saw a large beetle crawling off with fake jewels glued to his back. Turns out a typical souvenir of the region is a live 'brooch'.
My scariest moment was encountering a spitting black cobra while hiking in South Africa. We should have known better. We're familiar with snake habits from hiking in Eastern Washington and Arizona in the spring. You always need to be careful on days that start cold and warm up especially around rocks. As the day warms up, it is not unusual to find snakes out in the sun to warm up. We were late to get back for a tour and we were hiking really fast. I was in the front and came around a corner to find the cobra reared up with his hood flaired out. Let me tell you... I stopped immediately. Strangely, I did not scream. I just said "eeek!" and asked George if that was a black mamba. He matter of factly said "No, it's a black spitting cobra". We backed away and the snake went down and slithered away from us. It was huge (7 feet). I later found out that it can spit poison 3 meters and I was within range. I regret that I never got a picture.
Spiders petrify me. A spider bit me 4 times on my cheek and I had to go to the hospital here in Italy. Italian scorpion bites hurt very badly; they cause big sore itchy lumps.
Never heard of a cattle grub in Italy - thank God.
Ok now we are onto something...You know, a bit like in the jaws film when they are all out at sea and all the one guy can do is show his apendix scar? whilst the others have got huge scars of shark bites and stuff?
Ok Marta you stood face to face with a black spitting cobra...(and survived to tell the tale)
Ok here goes.
I was bitten on my arm by a mangrove snake. The bugger caught me by surprise and got me before I knew what happened. He was about 6 feet long and he fair scared me to death. When he went for me I reacted by grabbing him to try to get him off. He instinctively coiled around my arm and body. I jumped into the pond and put me and him underwater and he let go and swam off.
At that point i started to worry about the crocodiles.
Slow Travel Talk 
We had a funny experience on Langkawi by the way. We were out walking on night and all of a sudden I heard a scream from my wife Nikki who was walking right behind me. So I turned around to see what was wrong and she was just staring at me...so I started walking towards here and she was screaming "Don't come any closer"...I was starting to wonder what I had done wrong of course. Well, eventually she managed to speak and it turned out that I had a huge flying beetle stuck to the back of my shirt. There was a local standing near us and he picked it of my back 
We saw this flying beetle quite a lot...it was so big that it seemed to have big problems when landing hehe.
(the green of this face represents how I feel right now! I'm with lesfaye -- I shouldn't be reading this thread, but "ah just cain't quit it"!)
