Friend's visit leads to astonishing discovery (LONG)

Not to be sensationalistic but what started out as a simple walk along the river with a friend lead me, eventually, to an article on the phenomenon of erotic falconry. Now who saw that coming? Certainly not me.

Let's take this one step at a time.

Renita (former WaMu researcher extraordinaire) was in Portland this weekend and made time to come over for a visit with her two lovely young girls. We all thought walking down to the river and getting our feet wet sounded like a good idea, and the dogs heartily concurred, as evidenced by ridiculous amounts of tail wagging.

The river level has fallen so low, however, that it's quite rocky at the river edge and hard to walk. Rather than doing the sensible thing and heading up river to a neighbor's swimming hole (where, in self defense, I've never been), we headed down river in search of a sandy area that I vaguely recalled from a walk a few weeks back.

Well, we walked. And we walked. And we walked some more.

To get the full effect you have to picture small, sparkling girls tripping valiantly over large, bumpy boulders and algae-coated river rocks while Quirk (young English setter) runs wildly in circles, tangling his leash around ankles and occasionally pulling so vigorously that at least one person falls down. While tears were not shed, they were definitely considered.

All the while, Renita and I acted like everything was fine and talked about the latest goings on in our lives.

Finally we gave up on finding the beach and sat down on the rocks to continue our chat in peace. The girls found a blackberry patch in the woods and proudly brought berries to us, served on a plastic shovel we found washed up on the riverside. Quite nice.

At length, we headed back to the house. Now, the walk to get here had been a bit rough. And there seemed to be some rough trails in the shrubbery beside the river. So, we decided to take a different route back to the house.

We took a vote afterwards and agreed that this was not a good decision.

Blackberry brambles riddled the nonexistent path, tearing into tender young knees and ripping at our clothes. Then, disaster struck. With no warning or explanation, Renita, one of her daughters and I were all attacked by some kind of invisible insect. That's the only explanation I can find. We felt pin pricks, then excruciating pain - like needles being driven through our flesh.

Much flailing and screaming ensured, followed by running.

At long last we made it back to the trailer and did our best to salvage the visit. (Thank you for your graciousness, Renita!) We investigated the bite marks, applied cool cloth and ice cubes and confirmed that we would all be just fine.

Still wondering about that erotic falconry reference? It's coming, it's coming.

Post-dinner, Brian and I settled in for our nightly Internet & NFL-fest. I decided to try to figure out what bit us.

Through a variety of searches I came across a site that was not what I was looking for, but just what I needed.

Here's a snippet:
"Our recent coverage of "The 5 Most Horrifying Bugs in the World" made reference to the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, something we felt the need to explore further. Apparently Dr. Justin O Schmidt, an entomologist...felt the need to create a ranking system for insect stings ... Typically the "research" was conducted on himself and frequently required provoking the little guys to murderous rage (fear?) in order to get them to attack/defend."

Full article:
http://scienceblogs.com/zooillogix/2008/01/the_schmidt_sting_pain_index.php

Example of sting ratings (on a 1 - 4 scale):
1.2 Fire ant: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet & reaching for the light switch.
1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.

Now, I ask you, how could I not read on?

To make a long story short, I followed many different tangents of this article, including a very well done interview with this guy. Holy cow. I don't know if he's crazy or the luckiest guy on the planet to love his work that much.

I finish reading the interview and look up to find one of the links on the page is to an article called, I kid you not, Erotic Falconry. I went through the thought process of asking myself if it could possibly be an ad that would instantly pop up all kinds of disturbing issues. But no. It looked just like all the other (somewhat bizarre) article headlines.

So, I read the article. It was mostly pictures, with a link to the Erotic Falconry website. One of the subsequent comments summed up the article nicely: "I don't know what's worse.. the fact that this site exists or the realization that I'm mildly disappointed it's all photoshopped."

Side note: If you read anything on the Zooillogix site, be sure to take in the comments. Nuff said.

I'll wrap it up since I doubt anyone has stuck it out through this extremely long post. Next update will be back to the latest on the house!

Medical update: yes, my arm does still hurt. A single bite/sting/whatever started as a small red dot, then a welt, and is now a 2" swollen area of pain. It's on my bicep so I look kind of bulked up and macho on that side. The redness is starting to fade and it will probably be a non-issue by morning. Which will lead me to look back on this post and wonder what could have possibly compelled me to blather on at such length over something so minor. Welcome to blogdom. :-)