Introducing Venancio

Great news, everyone!

You have all read the "List of things that have parasited me" in an earlier entry. So, I have a new one to add to this list: a bot-fly (Dermatobia hominis), known as "colmoyote" in mexican Spanish. This nice fly comes to you and lays an egg that, in contact with your body warmth hatches and the larvae digs under your skin, where it feeds till it has grown enough to go out, jump to the ground and transform into a pupa. It is a sneaky insect, for it can also trap a mosquito or a smaller fly, put the egg on top of it it, and let it do the transport! I have baptized mine as "Venancio".

Once you have a colmoyote, you have two options: let it fulfill its life cycle (let it grow and drop out... eventually) or tackle the issue. This second option is pretty likely, for you probably don't like the idea of something living, growing and feeding on an inside you. Also, it itches pretty much, specially when the little bastard comes out to breath through its little hole, or when it feeds. Consequently, you may choose to kill the bug. For that, you have to asphyxiate or poison it (with gasoline, nicotine or other nasty chemicals). In my case, particularly, I enjoy of being on top of the food chain, and I am not keen on being part of nobody's menu.I opted for the first option.

Venancio is down there. You can appreciate the little breathing hole.

For that, I first tried simply asphyxiating the bug. You should only put tape on top of it, and let nature follow its curse, for it needs to breath. The problem is that in this extremely warm and wet climate sweat drops the tape off too rapidly, so it was pretty useless. Consequently, I had to jump onto more extreme measure.

The second option was poisoning it. For that, you take a little tobacco, you chew it a little (it is not as disgusting as it seems), put on top of the bug, and seal with tape once again. It's way faster than asphyxiating, and nicotine will make a good job drugging the little worm to the death.

Once death, you can either squeeze it out (not a good idea to do it when it is still alive, it is possible but very painful), or let your body deal with it.

I include some pictures of the process, and how the colmoyote looks like in your skin:

Venancio before treatment #2.

Treatment #2: chewed tobacco.

Treatment #2; tobacco on top of the bug, and sealing tape.

Some of you have also heard from me about the evil malagasy parasitic flies. This is one video we took in Madagascar in which you can see how to extract on the egg bags these nasty little animals lay inside your feet every time they can (literally, I got one almost every time I took off my boots...). Pretty bloody, so no good for delicate stomachs!