Mythical Bowl of Creatures

“You missed it, man,” Courtney said.

“What did I miss?” I asked.

“You know that pregnant camel spider I caught?”

“Yeah?”
“We tossed it in a box and lit it on fire.”

            When we got bored, we got creative and perhaps a bit demented.  Camel spiders were a thing of legend before I actually saw one up close.  There were stories and pictures of gigantic creepy crawlies that would get you in your sleep, but they weren’t that bad.  Don’t get me wrong; camel spiders are nasty to deal with, just not to the epic proportions you’ve probably heard about or seen in seriously obscured photographs.

            A typical camel spider is the size of a pack of cigarettes.  The ones I encountered didn’t crawl like most spiders.  They leaped!  This is the part that freaked me out.  You’ve got a hand-sized spider 15 feet away and he’ll close in on you real fast with quick leaping ability and jumps of 2-3 feet at a time.  On top of that, camel spiders weren’t poisonous, but they had two pairs of interlocking fangs that would tear into anything they grabbed onto making for an unpleasant encounter.  They also made a hissing noise that sounded like a cat’s, but since they are much smaller than cats, it came off as a whispering mini hiss.  True story.

Girls, don't be screaming at your computer now.

            Courtney came up with an idea to trap one without getting messed up.  He took a concertina wire glove and thru it within striking distance of the camel spider.  Being territorially threatened, the spider leaped and latched on with his four fangs.  The C-wire glove is made to protect the hand from sharp objects, so once the spider bit into the glove, Courtney had just enough time to shove him into an empty Gatorade bottle before it could get loose.  He hit the jackpot, as this was no ordinary camel spider.  It was a pregnant one and a little bigger than the others we caught.  We must destroy this beast before it gives birth to more vermin!  How?  Burn it at the stake!  The crowd watching was probably much like the crowds during the Salem Witch Trials screaming, “It’s the devil!”

“There’s like, these things coming from under the ground,” Gonzo said.

            What Gonzo was referring to were scorpions.  It was late at night when the rains came.  White platoon had two soldiers manning an observation post, or OP.  We were responsible for that OP a few days at a time to over watch a checkpoint that was blinded by the trenched hills where the Iraq/Iran war raged during the 1980’s in eastern Diyala Province.  It was a dry place, but with a pathetic river running thru it, there was room for life.  Albeit not the kind of life you want to see in the middle of the night.

            The rain would bring scorpions to the surface in drones.  Our guys had to do what they could to stay off the ground.  We just lit the area with chem lights to keep an eye on things.  There wasn’t a lot we could do for scorpion bites with minimal scorpion kits back at COP Cobra.  The funny thing about scorpions is that it’s the small whitish-pinkish-translucent… ish looking ones you have to worry about instead of the big ass black ones.  The black ones can still kill, but the little guys kill faster with a higher dose.  So how can bored soldiers turn this into a good time?  Trap one and toss it in the burn box with a camel spider to see who wins.  It’s only natural, right?  The scorpion wins every time with a venomous strike from the tail as the spider focus its attack on the front claws.  Fatal mistake.  Then we burn both of them.  “It’s the devil!”

Chris Hall up at the OP... land-o-scorpions.       

“Whatchya got there?” I asked Wai-Tai.

“I saw that lizard crawling on the T-wall and thru a rock at it,” he replied.

“One shot, one kill!” White Toast proclaimed.

“Hell yeah,” I added.

“After it fell I tossed it into the ‘Mythical Bowl of Creatures’ over there.”

            Wai-Tai put a bowl next to our sad campfire on COP Cobra and as critters popped up, we hunted them and added them to the bowl.  We found foot long lizards, scorpions, camel spiders, hedgehogs and field mice.  At the checkpoint we found even more.  We took on wild dogs as our pets, watched foxes circle our perimeter and birds half the size of a human torso nosedive to catch rodents.  We fancied them the “Birds of Pandora” since they carried such strong colors of red or green and looked like they would be one of James Cameron’s creations from Avatar. 

The bowl itself after two capture/kills.

            At night we turned on huge lights to keep the perimeter well lit at the checkpoint.  This is where the action was.  I had never seen so many insects in such a small place.  It rivaled the house raids we did in Baghdad where we entered a house and the floor appeared to move because there were so many flies.  Insects rose from the river towards the lights and it resembled a snowstorm with zero visibility, only it was 120 degrees.  Bats, smaller birds and bigger insects would swoop in all night until their stomachs could hold no more.  Darwinism at its best folks.

Had to give your eyes a break with some cuteness... my homegirl Roxy and I at the checkpoint.