So the insects here are not much of a bother to us as humans. Its not like some south American rain forest deal where I seem to have the mistaken impression there are poisonous bugs everywhere.
The flies here are bad, as I've stated before some time back. Having an outdoor food oriented event before sundown is seemingly the highlight of a flies' life on Kwaj. Food gets swarmed with the little speedy, non biting flies. Its a non stop battle to keep them off the food. Wait a few hours, until the sun goes down and there will not be a fly present. Everyone who has spent a month out here knows this.
Cockroaches are here, but not as expectedly visible as one might think given the warmth of the air and all. I had one in the first residence they provided for me on Kwaj, for the Space Fence project. I can't speak for all the other contractors in that mancamp, but apparently San Juan hires a special bread of whiny folks, or the HR department is THAT good, but they paid us an extra 25$ a day if our little tiny small 4 person unit exceeded 2 people. We (James and I) did eventually get a third person....however, before that happened we were fairly certain the giant cockroach we named "Fred" would warrant "room mate pay". He was big, not that we had the kahoonas to catch him to check its genitals to see he was a "he", but he was the largest cockroach either of us had ever seen. I had no idea they could fly. I discovered this one day when Fred was on the bed of the room mate I never had. My kiteboarding gear was on that bed, and I was messing with it when Fred charged me from out of the blue. To someone outside of this scene comparing a being weighing nearly 200 pounds being at war with a "being" (read brown monster from hell) weighing only 4 pounds, seems ridiculous. The big guy should just smash the small guy. Sometimes life isn't so simple, especially when the little brown guy can fly. I nearly knocked myself out on the cheap furniture provided in the room. Ok, so that was a little dig...it could have been really expensive furniture that my head hit. My head hit the corner of the glued sawdust cabinet with a cheap wood colored veneer. There was no blood.
James killed Fred a few days later while sitting on the toilet and smashing him with a flip flop. We had to borrow a power washer to clean up the mess.
So ants.....there area few variety of those out here.......
I have to go to sleep, but let me try and spell out the fire ants here.
Friday night is the night we play ultimate (frisbee). Liz comes out, and immediately gets 5 scores of fire ants on her shoes and legs. I'll be honest, and say that I kind of dismissed it as a one time deal. It wasn't. It happened to her a few more times before I walked or ran across a penchant of them. It's really hard to believe you can walk across a little colony of ants an end up with a hundred of them biting your leg. Ants on cocaine.
Ants on cocaine that bite.
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