December 20, 2004

• ewwwwwwwww. monkeyfilter: two distinct furuncular lesions with a central pore
• "He finally mentioned it to me (his wife) & we talked about what it could be. Spider bite? Infected mosquito bite?" That hooker in Bangkok? Nancy from Accounting? God, one more things I need to protect my boys from...
• blee augh!!
• Not a big deal, Cows can get them quite easily. Horses as well. One usually wipes or sprays the critters to keep the bots away. Nasty things, though. I had to remove one from a cow.
• A good friend of mine brought one of these back with her from Costa Rica. On her hip. She knew what it was but decided to raise it as an experiment. It finally dropped out a few weeks later while she was helping me reside the house. Fortunately we caught it before it burrowed into the open dirt. She kept it until it hatched, took some video of it, froze it, pinned it, still has it in a box as far as I know. Very pretty thing it was, all green-shiny. Me, all I got while I was there was a tick and it came off pretty easy. Not sure I could have stood the wriggling and prickling she described as long as she did...
• Wow, I want a botfly! I could be the human terrarium!
• OMFG! I was both thoroughly fascinated, and thorougly grossed out...I cup my ball, and pray to the heavens! DAMN YOU BUGS OF THE WORLD! my scrotum is innocent! leave it alone
• Creepy stuff indeed. "Mammals are continually assaulted by parasites-- by lice, fleas, ticks, botflies, screwworms, and warbleflies-- that suck blood or lay their eggs in the skin. In response, mammals have evolved into obsessive groomers. The way a gazelle lazily flicks its tail and nuzzles its flank may look like the picture of peace, but it's actually in a slow-motion struggle against an army of invaders." -Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures, by Carl Zimmer is an excellent book about many different creepy parasites if you're interested. I've been reading it since I found out about it on an episode of This American Life. On Preview fractilid's friend needs to post some video of said botfly...
• There's a picture of a botfly larva being removed from someone's eye socket on the web somewhere. Not looking for it.
• could tell a flyspeck story but can we import those amazonian parasites that crawl up penile pee streams? cut down on random unwanted "watering"--
• I did a speech on the botfly back when I was in grade 7 just for the specific purpose of grossing out the class. It worked too.
• Nostrildamus: I believe this [Warning, very graphic] is the one you're referring to.
• Not a big deal, Cows can get them quite easily. Horses as well. I somehow interpreted this to mean that horses often burrow their way into cows until they are fully grown.
• i thought that was ponies in sacred cows explains strangely bumpy mad cows
• Nostrildamus:Don't look here. I only posted it because I'm nasty. WARNING!!!! NOT SAFE FOR ANYTHING!!!! Eeeeeuuuwww!!!
• It only hurts when the maggot squirms and if you swim, presumably because you are cutting off its air supply. Don't try to pull it out because it will burst. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
• That hooker in Bangkok? That'd be a Baht fly.
• i've got an actual story of what to do when you wake up with a large leech sucking on their eyeball
• Snopes has the pictures too, and some more info.
• Are those things good eating?
• Okay, what's going on? I know I posted about these buggers earlier in '04. I titled the post "They Live in Your Flesh" but now MoFi is returning NOTHING on a search. WTF?
• Remember the Big One of '04? That's what happened, scartol. It's all right, we're just pretending we've never seen any of the other double posts anyway.
• Starc: not really. About as appetizing as a housefly. My uncle, the jungle botanist, has lots of great stories about botflies (and other parasites), but his best is the one about telling a fellow flyer about that strange bump on his arm on the way back to Ottawa, followed, of course, by the rough-and-ready in-flight surgery (back when you could have a razor and tweezers in your luggage).
• The background color from Snopes certianly made me puke. Is that green legal?
• I cup my ball, and pray to the heavens! Warrior: ya gotta protect the one ya got Horses get bot flies and warbles, both. Won't bother going into the difference between them, suffice to say, there's enough yuck here to go around alread.
• GranMa speaks the truth and all shall listen. /blue, i tried to tell 'em it was no biggie...
• Joe Rogan had someone remove one of these from a horse... ...wait for it... ..with their mouth. *runs*