Your strangest encounter during a collecting trip

[wollastoni]

We all have heard many stories about strange encounters during a collecting trip.

Some have seen the bigfoot, some have seen big cats in British forests and so on...

What about you ?

What is the strangest thing you have seen during a collecting trip ?

For me... a mummy ! Yes, yes, a mummy !

It was in 2009 in the remote Baliem Valley in West Papua. There is a nice collecting spot in the North of Wamena called "Air Garam" (salt water in indonesian). It is a perfect spot for Delias and I have also seen an Ornithoptera chimaera charybdis there.

After having netted butterflies all day long, we went to the village at the bottom of the mountain. This village is called "Kurulu" but is also named "Jiwika" or "Air Garam" in the label of your insects.

In this village, the chief hides a treasure that he sometimes shows to visitors ... a mummy. It is said to be an old chief of the tribe, old of many centuries. It is impressive that in such a humid environment, they have developed a perfect method to mummify humans (there is a similar tradition in the Andes by the way). The mummy seems totally dry and solid (like a stone). If the chief of the tribe reads the Gentlemen Forum, it would be great if he posts his technque in the "How to..." section.

So this is my photo with the mummy.

[mygos]

Must have been a great moment !

A+, Michel

[deliasfanatic]

I've seen that photo before, and thought it was a carving!

[wollastoni]

The Dani tribe which lives in the Baliem valley is famous for its mummies. It seems there are still several of them in different villages. It is the only one I have seen.
Due to Dutch missionaries, the mummification tradition stopped in the beginning of the 20th Century (same for cannibalism).

[nomad]

My strangest  encounter was when I was operating a powerful and bright M.V.trap in a local forest alone  A group of people turned up by my tent with a policemen in tow to find that a U.F.O. had not landed. The look on their faces when I told them I was mothing was a joy to behold. How times change in the U.K, I would probably now be dragged off to the nearest police station to await the doctors reports.

[cabintom]

My strangest encounter occurred along a small forest path deep in the Congolese jungle. There I met a young Congolese man headed into town for the market. He on the other hand, met the first white devil he'd ever seen. Unfortunately, he was screaming and running in the opposite direction before I could get through the first syllable of "Bonjour!" He was still yelling some five minutes later (and a far ways away down the path). Now, I had left my bag at a location that forced me to follow him down this path... so I tried to give him enough time to "get away" before retrieving it. When I arrived there, I spotted him and a friend peering out at me from behind some bushes. Fortunately, a boy I had previously met came along just then and graciously took on the task (which he found quite amusing) of calming the young man down. The situation ended with hand shakes all around... so yeah, it could have been worse.

[louisianacurmudgeon]

I fought the bugs and the bugs nearly won ! A misadventure I will not soon forget

I published this event in 2012: Brou Jr., Vernon A. 2012. I fought the bugs and the bugs nearly won. South. Lepid. News 34: 187-188.

I had a true near death experience on Sunday October 14, 2012, while on the second day of a quiet field trip to a large privately owned working cattle ranch in S.W. Louisiana. Walking alone, while retrieving some sesiid pheromone traps left at this site on an earlier visit during 2012, I became lost and disoriented in the coastal marsh for 4-6 hours. I was unable to see above the thick vegetation (3-5 meters in height). Somehow, I failed to return using the same path which I previously entered. Repeatedly over several hours, my body and legs became entangled, encased and completely immobile in the high grass and thick fibrous plants. I could not free my legs or escape from the impenetrable vegetation. At this same time I became severely short of breath and suffered many hundreds to a thousand or more mosquito bites and then I fell into a large red ant (nest) mound (these are a venomous fire ant species which can kill humans and animals) and was covered with many hundreds of ant bites from head to feet. I have had severe polyneuropathy of the upper and lower extremities for several decades, a condition which results in one not being able to feel most mosquito and ant bites. This plague of insect bites caused me to suffer rapid heart rate and a very severe allergic reaction and subsequent near fatal asthma attack while unable to escape or return to my camp site. I did not bring water because it was suppose to take me far less than an hour to accomplish this simple task. Unknown to me at this time was that the repeated compression of the vegetation around my legs for hours caused me to develop (DVT) deep vein thrombosis and multiple pulmonary emboli were filling my lungs. Barely able to breath, experiencing chills, mentally and physically stressed, I was close to truly giving up on three occasions due to severe exhaustion. I did call home to tell my wife I couldn’t go on and that maybe I wouldn’t be coming home. This was a call I didn’t want to make.
Several hours later, I finally did make it back to my campsite by using my rescue albuterol inhaler many dozens of times, resting on the ground 5-10 minutes after every 2-3 meters of movement and taking numerous nitroglycerin tablets. When I returned to the campsite behind the farmhouse my body, especially torso, arms and legs were covered in hundreds to thousands of insect bites, skin cuts and my clothes were soaked with blood and bull poop. I stripped naked and using an outside garden water hose, I washed off. Did I mention the bull poop ? My legs and feet were extremely swollen due to the many bites. The subsequent 5-hour (260 miles) drive back home wearing only a pair of clean shorts included dozens more asthma rescue inhaler treatments with albuterol, many nitroglycerin tablets and was done exceeding the driving speed limits all the way. Arriving at home at 10PM, my wife Charlotte covered me with seven different over-the-counter maximum strength antiseptic and pain relieving sprays, two prescription topical preparations and an entire bottle of calamine lotion (calamine lotion provided the best relief). I spent the two subsequent days getting urgent care treatments, nebulizer Ventolin treatments, steroid injections, oral steroids twice a day for the next five days for the ongoing severe allergic asthma attack brought on by the many venomous ant bites. And, if this was not bad enough, I slept for only four hours in the first four days after returning from the marsh, and my legs spasmed violently and continuously due to the extreme compression and stress I put them through. When I lay down my breathing difficulties quickly returned; I was only able to stand, but that didn't help either due to the severe leg muscle fatigue and weakness.
I don’t plan on making any collecting forays away from home during the remainder of 2012 and I am unsure about future collecting field trips. I left seven pheromone traps somewhere in the marsh, a small price to pay considering I came close not being here to tell this story. Other entomologists have told me many times that I accomplish more than 100 other collectors combined they personally know. Perhaps this was one time I "pushed the envelope" too far, but that’s my lifelong personality and way I have done all things most of my life. What I have come to realize by experiencing it firsthand is that one’s normal judgment and mental clarity does not make an appearance in situations of extreme distress, in fact it disappears from one’s normal thinking.
The only large creatures on that particular site that day were myself and 700-800 free-ranging bulls. Being Saturday, the cattle wranglers were off or were at a different site that particular day. There were two shrimp biologists ending their 3-day stay who left the site shortly after I arrived on Friday a day earlier. I had my cell phone with me and the Parish Sherriff’s office number keyed into the memory, but I knew finding me would entail aerial search planes, helicopters, horse mounted searchers, and specialized vehicles and involve dozens of rescue and medical personnel going into night time darkness and charges for cases of mosquito repellant and cases of flashlight batteries for the rescue personnel, so I did not make that call, stupidly saving that as my last option. As I previously stated, mental clarity does not make an appearance in near death situations as this.
The third day upon returning home, I made an urgent appointment with my cardiologist because of severely worsening breathing difficulties, I left for the appointment, but rapidly worsening on the way and being extremely unable to breath, my wife drove to the hospital emergency room assuming I was possibly experiencing a heart attack.
Chapter 2 – A continuing saga.
One week after the incident, Saturday October 20, I returned home from a 4-day inpatient hospital stay, as it seems I developed and suffered multiple pulmonary emboli throughout my lungs and DVT (deep vein thrombosis) in my left leg, all as a result of this misadventure I experienced in the Louisiana coastal marsh a week earlier. And all along, this was the real reason for my breathing difficulties while lost in the marsh. This was also not diagnosed by urgent care due to limitations of their diagnostic equipment. Diagnosis of pulmonary embolisms requires a cat scan along with injected dye contrast. For the next several months, I am home on oxygen and four blood thinners to dissolve the blood clots. Writing this story now days later, I am fortunate that my breathing difficulties have significantly lessened with each passing day.
Chapter 3 -- When will it end ?
On October 28 I began to have breathing difficulties again and returned to the hospital emergency room, where I was diagnosed this time with pneumonia and sepsis (blood poisoning) along with a temperature of 103°F. It appears that upon discharge from the previous admission I was returned home with a blood infection at one of my IV access sites. The offending organism was MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) . MRSA is a “staph” germ that does not get better with the first-line antibiotics that usually cure staph infections.
On the afternoon of November 6, I was discharged home from a nine-day hospital inpatient stay with two-three weeks of daily intravenous antibiotics, weeks of twice-a-day subcutaneous lovenox injections and months of daily oral Coumadin. No it doesn’t end here; during the last five days in the hospital, I received round-the-clock IV morphine every 3 hours for a pinched nerve in my right leg apparently the result of lying in bed for weeks. Upon discharge I was switched from IV morphine to low dose oral morphine. This low dose morphine was insufficient to curb the extreme leg pain and I made an urgent doctor visit to my neurologist early November 7. The neurologist tripled the oral morphine, unable to provide me with any intravenous, epidural or intramuscular medications due to the fact that I was on four blood thinning medications.
The end, I doubt it.

[wollastoni]

Brrr... a very sad encounter.
I hope you feel better now.

Take care.

[cabintom]

Wow, that's a frightening story. Any advice for us younger folk, so that we might avoid a similar situation?

[mygos]

Yes, very frightening story !
What I would recommend in remote places, is always to go with somebody along with you in case something goes wrong ...

A+, Michel

[wollastoni]

Yes, that is an important advice.
You never know what can happen.

I also always bring a whistle, a cover and a cell phone with me, in case I get lost or if I break myself a leg...