Crazy critters you have come across in your travels
 

Here is an interesting one from Iraq. What is the oddest creature/insect that you have come across. Post a pic if you got it.

Camel Spiders...

Check 'em out, they can run 10 mph.
From someone stationed in Baghdad. He was recently bitten by a camel spider which was hiding in his sleeping bag. I thought you'd like to see what a camel spider looks like. It'll give you a better idea of what our troops are dealing with. Enclosed is a picture of his friend holding up two spiders. :eek:

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH !


I won't sleep after seeing that

Strangets critter - a monkey dashed across the highway while I was driving in southern Africa

I have a camel spider story from GW I.

We had been laggered up near a wadi for a few weeks, in a little clump of trees. After we moved out, we had a visit from the Doc telling us we needed to be on the look out for camel spiders. As rumor has it, a bunch of people were finding them rolled up in their cammie nets (which strapped on the back of our hummers). The danger, Doc explained, was that these camel spiders would bite you while you were sleeping. Their poison had the effect of a local anesthetic, and then they would literally eat the soft flesh of your cheeks, ear-lobes, or lips.

Nobody was really sure whether or not to believe it, since these kind of storeis are always going around. But the next day they issued some bug nets that we were told to sleep under. Only problem was they didn't have enough for everyone and I didn't get one. If we were one of those who didn't get a bug net, we were supposed to make sure that wherever we racked out it was not under the cammie net of the vehicle. No problem, right? So I found a nice, soft, flat spot in the sand about 5 meters away from our vehicle, laid out my bag, and hit the rack.

When our TF set up a perimeter, TOWs, HMGs and the tanks were on the perimeter. And whenever we would refuel, we would do it at night away from the pos. So it was not unusual to hear the rumbling of a company of tanks or duece-n-a-halfs go by your vehicle in the night, on their way out for a rendezvous with the refueler. That night, I heard tanks going by our vehicle, and knew they were close, but being used to sleeping around the vehicle didn't pay any special attention to it until the next morning.

When I woke up, LOL, I noticed that the tank tracks were about an arm's length away from where I was sleeping. I literally got lightheaded just thinking about it. I'm sure my little sleeping bag looked just like a little bush to those tankers going by in the night. Anyway, bad as they are, the camel spiders didn't seem so menacing after that.

I had a centipede that seemed about a foot long run up my shirt sleeve over there too while unloading boxes of chow for our plt from a warehouse. That was a nasty bastard.

I hate spiders, so there is NO way I'm going to find a picture of this mother.

I spent summer camp in Maine. Unlike sleeping under the stars or in a tent, which I enjoy as I can control my sleeping evironment or have utterly NO control over it, here we slept in ramshackle cabins with torn netting and many gaps and lofts for spiders to build their nests in. I was on the top bunk, next to a 'window'.

There, I made friends with two large spiders, which appeared to be about the same size as the above Camel Spider. I called them the 'spider family', and would check to make sure they were there before I went to sleep and whenever I went out to piss. As long as they were in their web/nearby, I figured I could sleep.

One night, however, I woke up with an especially bad hankering for the toilet. I grab my flashlight, but before turning it on make out a shape on the roof 2 feet above where I'm sleeping.

The spiders had decided to move in. I put up with it (the fear) for a few more nights before deciding to do away with my two new bunkmates. I solicited the help of a hardcore Aussie counselor, and off we went to kill/ permanently evict the spiders. When we arrived at my bunk, I pointed the pair out to him.

He froze.

What's wrong, I asked, suddenly quite scared by the fact that a man who has lived around spiders his entire life (his Dad studied them) had gone white.

'These are Wolf Spiders' he replied. 'The female here could have killed you'.



I never knew if that was true, but it freaked me out. We killed them, but that didn't mean that I slept any easier.

Solid

PS: what happened to your friend after he was bitten?

Hey Solid.... BOO!!!! LOL :p

Not exotic at all, but I am proud to say that I have sent MANY Black Widows to early graves. Basically, I have a severe hatred for anything that can potentially kill me without me even seeing it.

Damnit, Sacamuelas, you made me reach for my knife. I guess we're even, now.

Air- I was thinking about what it was about killer insects which unnerved me, and that was it. You don't see them, they often don't genuinely mean to attack you, and yet they can kill you.

Solid

We were moving down a Trail in Laos, not a very safe thing to do but it was going to get us closer to the Objective on time. As we moved, we stayed in the shadows on the side of the trail. All of a suddden my Point Man goes flying past me in a max speed di-di mode followed closely by #2 and #3. I grab a Frag and peek up the trail to see a KING COBRA hauling ass after them !!! I mean this sucker is 10-15 feet long and reared up. His head was about at eye level with me, I didn't even really think, I pulled the pin, lobbed the grenade, and HAULED ASS !!!! After the grenade went off, I looked over my shoulder to see many snake parts everywhere.

I regrouped the team and we moved into the bush to wait out what would definitely soon follow, lots of NVA. They came, found the Snake Parts everywhere and they all laughed their asses off about it. They thought that it had been another group of NVA that had moved down the Trail earlier in the day (we'd seen them) and left the area.

That was almost the scariest Critter moment. More to follow. Next, Cats or Rock Apes?? Hmmm?

Great story! This would be great material for the QP history project, I think . . .

Oh Yeah, I met a lawyer once:p

Try a wolf with one eye that hunted sheep like a cartoon character! We'd sleep in the field with our guns, right in with the sheep, and still we'd wake up with one or two missing. #

Got him in the end, though. Nice to have a gun with you when you go to sleep!

Solid

So, you were sleeping with the sheep?

TR

Nice. LMAO!

Got bit by one in Hawaii, got me on the arm while I was sleeping. Wasnt too bad, stung for a sec, enough to wake me up, then it just burned a bit. I was on about day 4 of an FTX with about 6 hours total sleep and didnt have any trouble going back to sleep. Another one of our guys got bit right on the cheek, swelled up so bad it shut his eye.

AM Cats, I know you have to have some good cat stories. Creepiest sound I ever heard was one of them grunting off in the dark somewhere, in eastern Thailand.