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Now you know why tarantula hawks are such a reliable “gross out” story for the uninitiated.
Speaking of bullet ants, I was once stung by one.
Ow ow owie ow. But LOL @ impaling the bastard with a #2. (Fantastic post btw. DAMN, NATURE, YOU SCARY!)
I have been EXTREMELY fortunate to avoid most stingy stuff (I too prefer beetles to the pointy-ended bugs)…although I did discover the hard way that the business end of a praying mantis means business (ow ow owie ow…but being the good little park naturalist I was at the time, I valiantly managed not to flick my hand and fling the rotten jerk-bug clear across the room – only because I was busy trying to show it to enthralled kids as part of a mini-lecture).
The first time I came across an oil beetle (a simply gorgeous blue Meloe angusticollis) I was working on an experimental dairy farm spending most of my time sorting through cow poop for bugs (good times). I was walking through a hay field, saw this glistening jewel of beautimoniousness and then freaked out because I DID NOT HAVE A COLLECTION VIAL. I had visions of immediate and large and painful blisters…and picked it up with my bare hands anyways. It promptly oozed at me, but b’gosh if it didn’t bother me in the slightest. I fear that this benign experience has set me up for future pain and suffering by dulling my sensibleness.
The only truly evil plant I’ve run into shall have to remain nameless (because I honestly don’t know what it was called). Whilst on a field course in Belize, I started to shimmy up a half-fallen tree to better snap photos of a troupe of Howler Monkeys. I don’t know what kind of bastard tree it was, but my arms broke out in welts and burned and stung for the next 24 hours. My oh-so-sympathetic PI just shook his head at me (he did that a lot) and said “the trees in this country have no sense of humour”.