Small Amazing Things, pt. 4: Bugs

Taking this series to its most literal extreme, I wanted to talk a bit about tiny little things that are everywhere around here: bugs.

I have been in Thailand for nearly four months, and I swear that I have seen a new, different insect every single day. The biodiversity, nevermind the population size, is astounding, and really makes you wonder why we humans think that this is our planet.

Some are beautiful, some are strange. Some are huge, and others tiny. I have watched spiders hunt, stuck my ear up to a stingless bee's tube hive, and fed ants to Antlions (NERD alert: definitely the inspiration for Luke's mode of almost-execution at the beginning of Return of the Jedi). As I noted last week, I've even seen bugs wrestle.

 I've eaten bamboo worms, grasshoppers big and small, bees, ants (mostly unintentionally) and giant water bugs:

 

I occasionally swat at cockroaches at home, and have waged a pretty impressive chemical war against mosquitoes.

Until Saturday, I would have said the Ted v. Bugs scorecard would have shown me with a considerable lead. And then everything changed.

I was driving my motorbike on the highway to go climbing early in the morning when I felt something hit the inside of my thigh. This happens occasionally: trucks kick up gravel or sand, and it stings your shins, thighs, or chest.

Except the stinging didn't stop. It actually got much worse. I instinctively reached down and pulled an enormous wasp out of my leg. I then freaked out, pulled over, closed the face mask of my helmet (so nobody would hear me?) and started screaming in pain. I waited about five minutes to make sure I wasn't going to pass out, then I got back on my bike and drove on.

I climbed all day in spite of the discomfort, although I could tell something was definitely not quite right. That night, I went out to stay with my host family, had a few beers, and forgot all about it.

In the morning I woke up to a stiff leg, and a red lump on the inside of my thigh that was about the size of my palm. But things kept getting worse. By Sunday night, the swelling had wrapped around the back of my leg and down towards my knee. My skin was stretched tight like a drum, and the inner half of my leg felt half-asleep and half-itchy.

Right now (about 62 hours after the sting), my right thigh is about double the size of my left, and the inside is turning from an irritated red to a bruised purple. I tried to take pictures, but it's my hairy, pale thigh, and you don't actually want to see that.

If it's not better in the morning, I'm going to the hospital. You win, bugs. You win.