My friend had to have an outpatient surgery, the day after Christmas.
She spent Thanksgiving on a Florida key.
Early December she had an itchy bump on her butt. It got red and angry. The doctor gave her antibiotics and some cream.
It got worse.
Doc referred her to a dermatologist clinic.
They decided it needed to be lanced.
Dec. 26 comes and they deadened her butt.
And cut. It wasn’t an infection. Well, kinda.
It was a bot fly.
I’ve lived rurally many years. Somehow I’ve never heard of this.
I don’t know if they are in South Arkansas. I don’t care. Imma have to move or order me up a bubble to live in.
Gahhhhh!
If you are sensitive don’t Google it.
God, I wish I never did.
There’s this thing called ‘Wolf worm’
Oh my freakin’ god!!
Gahhh!
What is wrong with me I can’t stop googling this stuff? Someone stop me.
I can’t unthink it.
No, it didn’t. The botflies catch mosquitoes and lay their eggs on them before releasing them. The mosquito then bites a person and transfers the egg over.
Those are also bot fly larvae. In the southern US when a wild animal gets them, they’re called “wolves”. My father talks about finding them on squirrels when he was younger. He is insistent that squirrels should only be hunted for meat after the first frost of the year, so that the “wolves” will have dropped off.
If I recall correctly, in old England, there was a time when some physicians had a theory that cancer was actually caused by a tiny ravenous wolf inside the body. So tumors and swellings became called “wolves.” Many old medical texts have this usage.
I’ve never trusted nature since the summer of 1977. I was nearing the end of my stint in the Army and we had to go on a trip into the temperate rain forest of the Pacific northwest. My tentmate and I, the only women in the group, almost pitched our tent on what turned out to be an enormous anthill. I don’t know what kind of ants they were but those nasty suckers were HUGE! Still makes me itch just thinking about it.
