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bug report

i was reflecting on all my pesterance by bugs down here, and i realized that i has left one environment where i was constantly annoyed by bugs, for another: honduras, particularly la mosquitia.

i never got bit real bad, thank somebody, but i did have enough taste of insects;

for one thing, you just get used to sharing everything with them; at least i did. ants were in the honey, swimming, crawling on mangos, on your feet. i only jumped around and made a fuss when they bit me, cuz that hurts. many fire ants in inconvenient places - underneath the villars' clothesline, at the riverside entrance of the first day shelter, pico dama trip. those things sure pack a whallop.

otherwise, the scariest experience had to be in plaplaya, July 25. i was eating lunch, i finished, i was descansing, reading borrowed tour books on honduras to see what other people said to do here. i absentmindedly reached to itch my crotch region, and ran across an extra, como se dice, an extra lump. at the base of my penis. it wasn't just a lump though, it flopped around - loose but attached.

no hurry really, i calmly finished my jugo de nance and caminandoed para la playa. there, between the sand and the beach brush, i dropped my drawers and checked out this big grayish reddish shiny thing - like a blood clot or something, hanging out near my nuts.

hooo boy. was this surgery? like infection? a hole in the skin? a weird growth?

wait - it had legs. little red ones. it was a tick, dammit. a tick, the size of my pinky nail. ug.

so, i pulled it off, in kind of a hurry - i was pretty grossed out. and it couldn't have been there that long, i know my groin.

anyways, no apparent sideeffects, i stuck the tick in my journal, it exploded blood all over pages 131 and 132; i still have the beast's husk, embalmed in scotch tape.

otherwise, the worst menace is probably the coloradillas, chiggers in the states. angela martin, from the peace corps in belen, sez they wait in the grass, hop on your legs, and crawl into warm places - ie your crotch and armpits, or between elastic and your body, and proceed to bite the hell out of you, in triangular formations! oy!

my policy on bites, i don't itch. es un idea muy buena. they go away faster. you feel stronger.

i could write here on bugs in el bosque, the forest around las marias, but that's another whole web site. later. ants longer than an inch. scorpions on my shoulder.

and there was a butterfly farm...

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