Saturday, October 15, 2005

My last bug story… for awhile…

One night I was camping in Midigo. I had a small tent, that was really just a mosquito net. I had stayed up late talking with some of the elders. After dark we set up a lantern and continued talking, but we started to attract the bugs…

While I wasn’t bothered at first, a huge beetle flew up my shorts and made its presence well known to me. My reaction provided enough entertainment for everyone to keep laughing for several minutes. They told me that only boys wore shorts, men wear trousers. Presumably this was to keep this sort of thing from happening.

I got to bed that night, only to remember that I had forgotten to call into the Emergency Operations Center (EOC). In high risk areas, I was supposed to check in once a day. Since the sat phone needed to be set up with a clear view of the sky, I had to get out of my tent and set it up about fifty feet away.

Once done with the call I went back to the tent. Only I found I had left my flashlight on and the entire tent was covered with bugs. When I mean covered, really mean that the bugs were so thick you could not see through them. The only good news was that the flashlight had been pointing away from the tent door and I was able to get into it with just a few bugs joining me.

Thinking things were over for the night, I turned off the light and tried to sleep. But there was this crawling noise. All of the bugs that where on top of the tent were now crawling down the sides and under my tent. The floor was literally moving. So I started smashing them. After a few minutes I realized just how fruitless this was. Falling asleep much later than I had wanted.

In the morning I lifted the tent to find hundreds maybe over a thousand smashed bug carcases.

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