Yes, it definitely is. Once when I was sleeping in my tent in the Pearl Islands I was awakened by a scorpion creeping up my chest (like the tarantula on Bond in Dr. No). I tried to brush it off, but got stung. In the process it got thrown into the far recesses of the tent. I hunted for it with my headlamp for about a half hour without finding it. I didn’t get much sleep the rest of the night; with every itch I thought it was on me again.:eek:
From nature shows I’ve watched, I can’t believe that ants wouldn’t have either bridged the gap, or after bodies in the cans built up simply walked across.
Quote:
“If it was intended as non-fiction, it would be vastly exaggerated. I think most people would vacate their house and go next door rather than try to stay.”
First Cecil destroys the idea that a whale might swallow a man and that man surviveto tell the tale–bleached white, and now this. Common sense destroys so many good human stories. All I can say is that it came from the distant memory of the author as a young girl, as I recall it. I’ll look around for some reference to it online to see if we can get a handle on something specific.
The relentless self-sacrifice needed to breach the Kerosene can-barrier is an interesting question. How long might even swarming ants persist? At some point, instinct must dictate that enough is enough in advancing along some unproductive line, otherwise you lose the whole swarm at the first river, and that can’t flatter Darwin. (“Kerosene” is spelled right this time; and of course it’s “entomology,” not “etymology”–I can’t judge spelling unless I see it in hard copy).
Incidentally: Were there a scorpion in this boy’s tent–and had it stung me once already, I think I would “vacate [the] house and go next door rather than try to stay.” How do you deal with Bushmasters?
I actually helped Cecil with the research on that column. I also had read the story the story of James Bartley as a kid, and believed it then. So it was interesting to find out it was actually a hoax. Sorry about that.
Well, it was an uninhabited island. If I had tried to sleep outside I would have been eaten alive by sandflies. And I wasn’t going to wake up my friends and ask to sleep in their tent just because of something like a scorpion.
Avoid them, mainly. You don’t actually see very many poisonous snakes in the rainforest. There was a case once where my Indian guides found a five foot Fer-de-lance next to camp and killed it. I usually believe in live and let live with snakes, but since we were five days from medical aid I didn’t mind too much.
Best ant movie of all time: “THEM”
I was at the perfect age to be scarred for life…
Army ants have swarmed my home and I’ve come across them in the jungle many times. Their bivoucs are amazing and I’ve definitely poked them with sticks, then run away to avoid the swarms. As others have noted, we generally welcomed them in our homes for pest control duty, although they occasionally chewed up laundry and tents. I’ve seen them swarm and eat scorpions that were four inches long and nested birds, but nothing bigger except for dead critters. Depending on how close you are to their nest, you can easily step over them. They once came as I was doing laundry and I basically tiptoed around them. If someone were drunk or tied in place, they could definitely die, but as the group is constantly on the march, you’d have to be really lucky to kill someone this way.