One of the joys of a career in geology is the opportunity it affords humble earth scientists to get closer to nature, David Attenborough style. Sometimes a bit too close. Here are a few stories on the nastier strains of wildlife that I’ve encountered myself, or stories that friends have told me. I’ve covered some already –tortoises, ostriches, polar bears etc.– so they won’t be rehashed here.
This list is NOT a top ten and it’s not arranged by level of threat or ability to cause painful death or injury. It’s simply a list of stuff that occurred to me after my mother-in-law (thanks Maureen) planted the idea for the post. If you have your own story, let me know via the comments.
Hairy Insect Things With Lots of Legs
In the field, anything with lots of hair, a bulbous pink abdomen and more than 4 legs should be studiously avoided, which is why I’d never vote for Boris Johnson.
If you ask me, the single worst insect nightmare is the camel spider, not actually a spider and not really a scorpion either. I touched on them in an earlier blog post. Giant sandy coloured fuckers with huge jaws, they lurk all over Africa and the Middle East, lying in wait to scare the shit out of arachnophobic people like me.
I watched one run into my sleeping spot once in Pakistan. I was set up on an old bed in a mudbrick hut – a comfortable spot compared to the previous week of rocks and sand. A Pakistani colleague opened the shaky wooden door and in it came; 6 inches of disgusting arachnid making a bee line for my backpack under the bed.
All sorts of insect-related fun ensued as I carefully emptied my pack outside, hands shaking in a state of total horror. Out it popped, landing with an audible thud on the ground, and then it proceeded to run round and round in circles, jaws snapping, pissed off at losing such comfortable new home.
And years back, during my gold mining days, I was on a first date with a lovely lass in a restaurant in Klerksdorp, in what was then the Transvaal. Five minutes into the main course there was a scream from across the room. A camel spider had dropped off the curtain and landed on an occupied table causing abject panic. It turned out the creature had been fighting with 3 or 4 other camel spiders that decided to scatter en masse across the restaurant carpet and hide under carefully selected tables including ours. The date was over
Cockroaches
On the subject of bugs…Fucking cockroaches! Despite what biologists whisper reverentially about their evolutionary success and their incredible longevity in the fossil record, I really don’t like them. Evolution hasn’t done us any favours by making the humble roach such an unmodified survivor. They’re ugly and hard to get rid of, able to jam themselves into any nasty crack or hole in your kitchen cabinets. At night, in cockroach country, they make a faint but really annoying clicking sound, and just like a mosquito’s whine, once you’ve heard the clicking there’s no way you’ll be able to sleep as you wait for the repulsive invertebrates to crawl into your sleeping bag.
My friend Brent hates cockroaches too. He spent time working in Papua New Guinea on an island called New Ireland. As an aside, the mind boggles how anyone could think anywhere in PNG (palm trees, volcanoes, and turquoise sea) looks remotely like Ireland (bogs, potato fields and rain.)
After a week in the field, sick and tired of foraging for shoots and nuts, they would come into the thriving metropolis of Kavieng to stock up on condoms and get a meal and cold beer. There was only one place to eat in Kavieng -and I shudder to think what it must’ve been like- but its saving grace was an endless supply of fresh lobster. The delicious lobster meals always gave them the shits, but that was a small price to pay for a change from the normal camp food.
Then one day, in a vain attempt to mitigate the impending shits by washing his hands before the meal, one of the group foolishly went in to kitchen to use the sink. He was greeted by the disturbing sight of a pile of freshly cooked lobsters, about to be served, covered in a seething layer of cockroaches also bent on enjoying a tasty seafood dinner but without the post-meal shits, presumably.
The last time I personally saw a cockroach in my house was in the late 1990s, in my flat in Budapest. I was pulling a tribal rug I’d bought in Pakistan out of a large hockey bag fresh off the plane from Karachi. As I unrolled it, 6 roaches shot out, enthusiastic stowaways hell bent on illegal immigration. I managed to step on a couple while they scattered -producing that nasty crunching feeling under foot- but the others fucked-off under the cooker where I left them for my elderly Hungarian cleaner.
Taxi Drivers
Not strictly wildlife I know, but definitely animals and 100% dangerous. Taxi drivers have been the source of probably more close shaves for me down the years than any other life form.
The stupidest words you can ever say in your life -and trust me you’ll only say them once- are “Get me to the airport, quickly” to a Turkish taxi driver, as my friend Jock will tell you. Imagine being in the passenger seat during a car chase spawned by the sordid, drunken union of Jason Bourne and James Bond and you’ll get the drift.
In the mid 1980s I was (unfortunately) in a taxi that managed to crash into a lamp post on the freeway near Edmonton in Alberta, whilst heading to the airport. I was flying to Whitehorse for post-grad’ field work, when we winged another car at speed -God knows how- and sailed merrily off the road at 50mph hitting the lamp post square on. I saw it coming and managed to tuck myself behind the driver’s seat, which stopped me from sailing through the windshield and getting to know a galvanised aluminum pole a bit too well.
As I climbed out of the taxi, helping the bloodied driver who’d bashed his face up on the steering wheel, the driver of the other car decided it would be a jolly good idea to run over and push me around because -as the passenger- the accident was obviously my doing. The argy-bargy came to a rapid end when all of us realised we were being eaten alive by a dense swarm of giant flesh-eating mosquitoes that had been hiding in the long grass, waiting for crash victims. It was their lucky day.
Big Cats
I’ve never personally run into a big cat in the bush but I did once see 2 bobcats slinking around the bottom of a disused open pit gold mine in Nevada – I recall thinking they were the dark, lost souls of unemployed geologists. A largish hawk was circling them, trying to work out if they were a viable lunch (er.. no.)
Close to 35 years ago, a friend told me a story from South Africa, set -I believe- in the Rooiberg tin mines in the middle of the Bushveldt (if you’ve heard the story from someone else, it may be well be different – 35 years is long time in the mind of a simpleton like me.)
The cassiterite workings were accessed by an inclined adit with a ventilation door at the bottom. One day, after the regular blast, the barring and scaling crews were heading down the adit to start work cleaning up the freshly blasted ends. They’d noticed something moving at the bottom of the adit, but in the dim evening light they couldn’t make out what it was until it started up the adit toward them. It was a leopard, full grown and clearly unhappy at finding itself in a big concrete lined hole.
At their largest, male leopards “only” reach 200lbs in weight. They average closer to 100lb, but that’s 100lbs of big cat that doesn’t take too kindly to being cornered by miners clutching lunch buckets. Luckily for the workers, the cat decided to run away. Unlucky for them, it fucked-off through the vent door into the extremely dark, very maze-like and now potentially lethal underground workings.
This presented the team with an obvious problem. Their work site contained an angry -and possibly hungry- leopard with excellent night vision, that was quite prepared to bite and slash its way to freedom. So, management did the proper thing and retreated to the boardroom where they hastily assembled a team of “volunteers”, and dressed them in multiple layers of heavy leather underground jackets, rubber knee and elbow pads, hard hats, and anything else they could find to mitigate a close encounter with 100lbs of flying razor blades.
Armed with crow bars the victims moved cautiously in pairs into the adits and tunnels hoping to scare the leopard out. I’d like to say the story had a happy end for all concerned. Alas no. The cat decided to jump at one of the miners from a side tunnel. His buddy saw it move, and with lightening reflexes caught the poor cat mid air with a hefty swing of his crowbar, killing it.
Big Snarly Dogs
Big snarly dogs are a problem I’ve run into regularly in the field. Those of us lucky enough to have explored in Turkey or Iran have all met the giant Kangal sheep dogs at some point. They stand at least 10 ft tall at the shoulder and need to eat about 100lbs of man flesh a day just to maintain their weight. Least that was my first impression on meeting one in the wild.
Kangals were bred to look like sheep so they could stroll along incognito with the mountain flocks to protect them from huge bloody great wolves and even bigger bears. All of which gives you an idea of how big Kangals can get, so they’re best avoided by tasty, soft bodied geologists.
It wouldn’t be so bad if they were cute, but they aren’t. Far from it. Stylishly attired in Mad Max bondage collars studded with a ring of outward pointing nails, they look like S&M fetish werewolves on the hunt for a rough date. Any wolf seriously lacking in common sense that tries to go for a Kangal’s throat gets a mouth full of sharp metal.
My closest encounter with 2 of the fanged-bastards was outside a small village in the Pontide mountains of Turkey. My colleague and I must’ve looked threatening because the dogs came charging out of a flock of sheep, up the steep slope below us, heading directly for us, baying like demented hell hounds after one cup of coffee too many. We had no choice but to stand our ground.
Hastily penning a last will and testament in my wet-strength field notebook -so the writing wouldn’t smear when soaked in warm blood as my throat was torn open- I rummaged through my pack for any food I could throw to delay premature death. Tuna fish (of course), bread and the last of my Rittersport chocolate bars were chucked their way to no avail. It’s amazing how fast an angry Kangal can eat a chocolate bar, wrapper and all.
Eventually we resorted to throwing large rocks at them -as big as we could throw- and after a couple of direct hits they backed off, drooling and barking until the shepherd arrived. Funny enough, his method of controlling them was also to throw rocks.
Anything Large and Dead
Big dead animals – sheep, donkey, cows- smell really bad. And if you spend enough time prospecting anywhere that has lots of grazing herd animals, you’ll smell it eventually, lucky you.
Trudging up creeks or mountain roads in the Middle East, we’d occasionally walk into a solid wall of that sickly-sweet stink; the smell that only a large lump of dead, decaying meat gives off. I bloody hate it. It would drift hundreds of meters from wherever the unfortunate carcass was, and there’d be an inevitable “What the fuck is that stench?” moment when you first smelled it. You’d never know exactly what had died up ahead; you’d just know that some critter, now bloaty with sticky-out legs and chunks missing, had shuffled off its mortal coil.
There are 101 ways for dumb domestic animals to meet a grizzly end. They drown in rivers, fall off cliffs or break legs. They get eaten by wolves or shot by annoyed landowners. Over the years I ran into dead sheep, pigs, goats and ex-cows but thankfully never a dead person. And they all smell the same; repulsive.
Baboons
Baboons make most other snarly creatures look like pink cartoon bunnies. For sheer intelligence, weaponry and ferocity, they’re hard to beat. Spend long enough in Africa and you’ll read stories in the news about them killing or maiming people by removing various parts of their victims’ bodies.
Large male baboons will try to deter interlopers by showing their canine teeth and flashing various other parts of their anatomy like their eyelids. Wikipedia didn’t mention them throwing poo (unlike Boris) but it did say they’re prone to making gestures -the great ape middle finger equivalent. If all else fails, they’ll band together and chase threats away mob handed; a scary proposition that I can confirm.
My one and only encounter with Baboons was in South Africa, in the Pilansberg national park northwest of Johannesburg. Some geo-friends and I were hiking a dry riverbed, which wended its dusty way through an area of eroded granitic rocks. It was very scenic, so we came armed with a few beers and some sandwiches for a picnic lunch. On the lookout for a pool to take a cooling dip, we rounded a bend in the wadi, at which our point man blurted out: “Fuck me, baboons…” A troop of 20-30 were crossing the sandy riverbed in single file. Females and babies were crossing, flanked by the males.
Everyone seemed to be happily minding their own business, but …a group of geologists carrying beer is not the quietest thing on God’s earth plus we were singing bible songs and reciting poetry as we strolled along, so the baboons spotted us immediately.
Their reaction was fast and seriously frightening. The adult males formed a line between us and the females. They sat there, big as German shepherd dogs, staring at us like a gang of soccer thugs about to storm the away stands. One after the other, they bared their enormous yellow canine teeth and flashed their eyelids at us. It was impossible to misinterpret the message. “Fuck off or there’s going to trouble, and we’ll win. And we’ll eat your faces and pull your arms off for good measure.”
We fucked-off. Luckily, our simian friends chose not to follow us and went on their family-oriented way.
Guinea Fowl
Yes yes, I know. They’re completely harmless and very tasty, but I did once hear a funny story about them from my bearded buddy Mike O, although he doesn’t remember telling me it.
Adjacent to Vaal Reefs mine in South Africa was a smaller operation, Afrikaander Lease. It exploited a near surface gold reef and was a fun little mine, with a small labour force and more interesting geologically than the big Vaal Reefs’ operations so we -the geologists- felt like we had some proper input into the mine operations.
The management at Af Lease had heard that the mine manager responsible for their operation was an avid hunter who liked shooting birds. Eager to please him and big-up their bonuses, they invited him for a half day of shooting on the extensive mine grounds. To make sure he bagged something they brought in a couple of dozen guinea fowl which they planned to release when he arrived.
Mr. Manager rocked up in his company Merc, shot gun in hand. After the usual round of grovelling handshakes, the Af Lease manager released the guinea fowl with a dramatic flourish, so the guys could follow them into the veldt and shoot a few.
Except, the birds had been hand-reared and were as tame as your pet dog and just as friendly. Hungry, and in need of their daily feed, the moment they were released they fluttered up onto the roof of the change house where they sat in a nice long line, not moving, eagerly watching to see which of the team had the seed bag.
Fish
Just kidding. I like fish.
And remember..
By far the best way to mitigate the potential danger of being attacked by people more in-the-know than you is to subscribe to this blog -if you haven’t already- using the World Wildlife Fund-approved subscription box at the top of this page. Every dollar you send me will go toward feeding my dog. Really.
Where did your pals use the condoms they stocked up on? I looked at New Ireland on Google Earth. It looked to me as though the only place remotely likely to offer an opportunity to use a condom was Kavieng itself, where, obviously, condoms are available.
The Great Bolivian Puma Massacre.
Seven or eight years ago I was stupidly convinced to go and look at a “gold mine” in the Department of Cochabamba. Cochabamba is a lot lower down from the Altiplano, so I thought it sounded a good idea – warm weather, trees, wild animals; all the sort of things that don’t exist on the Altiplano.
Off I went, geologist in tow, and a few others from the Altiplano region; one a miner, one a lecturer in law at a university, one a dentist, plus the fucking geologist. What a great troupe. We get to the village where the mine is supposed to be. Get out of the 4WD, meet some villagers. I stupidly ask where the mine is and get told “arquicito” (I think that’s how its spelt. I think its the word “aqui” meaning “here” with the normal Bolivian “ito” on the end to make is sound nice.). Eventually I get the idea that the mine is down there, in a valley, and unfortunately it was at the bottom of the valley.
Off we go, down into the valley of death, or near-death. An hour passes and I ask where the mine is again. “Arquicito, arquicito”. Another hour passes, trudging through the relatively dense bush. I’m beginning to regret that this place is warm to hot. Sweat is pouring out of me. 3 hours pass – where is this fucking thing? Arqucito, arqucito. I’m now getting psychologically scared hearing “arquicito, arquicito”.
4 hours pass and again the bush rumbles with the catch cry of the day “arquicito, arquicito.”
5 hours pass and I’m starting to realise that whatever I’m doing now I’ll have to do in reverse tomorrow. At this point death seemed a good option. Then all of a sudden, a river appears through the trees and some slabs of concrete; we found it; “Mina Arquicito.”
Its fair to say I was absolutely fucked. Someone had some cans of tuna; I was too buggered to eat. I laid out my sleeping bag on the biggest concrete slab and went to sleep and it was only about 7pm.
Now where’s the bloody puma I can here people thinking? Its coming. I’ve been to the zoo in La Paz and seen its collection of pumas. They are very large cats; clearly not to be messed with.
I got woken up a few hours later by a bit of commotion in the camp. At this stage in my Bolivian career my Spanish is still pretty crap, but even I could understand the word “puma” when its said in Spanish. My one and only thought was I need sleep and if the puma wants me as a meal then he can have me. I was too knackered to care.
Dawn comes and I find out what happened. A bloke from the village above us had walked by the camp at about 10pm. He told the group that the track he had just walked along is favoured by some of the local pumas, so he warned the “men” from the Altiplano to be aware. So the miner and the dentist had the wind really put up them by the notion of a puma wandering past that night looking for a meal. Even they knew that pumas eat people. People from the Altiplano and surrounding mountains are just not used to wild animals. They only know about llamas and sheep and the odd cow, and of course vizcachas. You rarely ever see flies and mozzies, let alone pumas, in the Altiplano. So this pair stayed up all night absolutely petrified and made sure the fire they lit stayed burning all night to scare any passing puma away. Fortunately for them no puma turned up, so we didn’t really have a massacre; just a major scare.
Now to the useless, fucking geologist. I told him to go and take some samples from inside the mine. I went with him in case a puma was sleeping in there. He took maybe 5/6 samples and then we left with the horror dawning on me that if it took 5 hours to walk down the hill how fucking long would it take to walk up the dammed thing. And how many times would I hear, “arquicito, arquicito?”
Seven hours later and dripping with sweat again we got to the village. All I could do was fall into the 4WD. No idea how many times I heard “arquicito, arquicito” as I climbed the hill in a trance. But we didn’t see any pumas, so that made the trip up the hill very worthwhile.
We put the samples into a local lab and the results came back with nothing, nada, zip – no gold. So I committed Mina Arquicito to its rightful place in the world – another fantasy prospect with nothing.
I saw the law lecturer just a few months ago for the first time since this trip. I asked him about the mine. He said the people from the village were happily working there and getting good gold. So the useless fucking geologist must have sampled the only rock in the place that had no gold. How can a mining engineer ever trust a geologist to do the right thing????????
So what does “arquicito” mean? It means its “close.” I guess for people who have no cars and are used to walking everywhere, something 5 hours away might be considered close.