I may have mentioned our larger that life bugs a time or two in the past, but this year the icky ones seem to be out in full force. A few that I’ll mention now.
The Nairobi Eye (or Nairobi Fly) is a pretty harmless little creature…that is unless you happen to crush it on your skin when it can cause third degree burns. Wikipedia: “The beetles neither sting nor bite, but their haemolymph contains pederin, a potent toxin that causes blistering and Paederus dermatitis. The toxin is released when the beetle is crushed against the skin. People are advised to brush or blow the insect off their skin to prevent irritation.[1]” We have been finding these everywhere this year. We had seen them occasionally the last two years, but it’s been an infestation this year. We thought it might be due to all of the construction around our house, but we’ve heard many others talking about them this year, too. One night we had at least a hundred on the bathroom ceiling that I noticed as I was getting the kids bath ready one night. No bath that night. The kids know to flick them off instead of squishing them, but the harm comes when you just feel something crawling on you and your reaction is just to smack it. We’ve had several friends with burns on their chest, face, and neck from these.
Next is this scary looking centipede that we’ve seen twice in our time here and both times have been in the last month. The first time was our trip to Brown’s Farm and then again today Ashlyn’s class found one crawling out of the sink. Now we’ve been told that they are fairly common at the beach during the rainy season. Great! Not only is it scary looking, but it’s also extremely painful to get bitten by one. Although it looks like it would sting like a scorpion it actually bites you. I think it’s the Tanzanian yellow legged Scolopendra. When I asked another mom if they were dangerous or just painful she responded “Well, that depends. Would you consider a non-fatal stab wound dangerous or just painful?”. I think I’ll avoid these.
The other thing we deal with regularly are mango flies (putzi fly). Well, that might not be the way to phrase it because we don’t have to ‘deal with’ them at all….as long as our clothes are ironed. The risk is that they lay eggs in the damp clothing and then they burrow into your skin and then you get an itchy boil and then a maggot pops out. Harmful? No. Disgusting? Yes. Definitely! So while everyone can tease us about having ironed underwear, I’ll take then any day over a worm hatching out of my skin. But, if this does happen to you the solution is supposed to be to just put vaseline on the bump and then the larvae/maggots can’t breathe, so they pop right out. Aren’t you glad you know?
(I’ll let you google your own pics of the boils, etc)
And you thought all we had to worry about were the large predators.
This post won’t stop you from coming to visit, will it?
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