What Is Your Favorite Song About Insects?

This week at WAIM, we are spending an hour with the smallest animals on Earth. It's a full sixty minutes of songs about ants, beetles, caterpillars, and more. What is your favorite song about bugs?

While I was traveling in the amazon this past February, I had a run in with a nasty breed of ant. On our first morning in the jungle, just before 8:00, Ama and I prepped ourselves for the short walk to the lodge for coffee and breakfast. As I made my way down the steps, I felt a sharp stabbing pain in my right foot near my little toe. As I reached for my shoe, I felt a second sting and wondered what in the Hell had just taken a chunk from my skin. Flailing, I managed to untie my shoe and get it off of my foot. I watched a large red ant crawl out of my shoe as I inspected the spot where I had been stung.

In addition to the pain of the bite, something akin to a wasp sting, I felt the tinge of idiocy in not having checked my shoes before putting them on my feet. We had been warned the evening before to double and triple check our shoes, but I had put them on without any thought. Now I wondered how swollen my foot would become, and how much of my time in the jungle would be compromised.

With a belated triple check of the shoe, I slipped it back on my right foot and trudged down to the lodge. Our traveling compatriot Monica, who is a nurse, suggested a compound of baking soda and water to extract the poison. I willing accepted her help, and we went together to the kitchen ask for the ingredients as best we were able with our limited Spanish.

As we explained the situation to our hosts, they quickly assured us that there was a tried and true cure for this kind of thing in the jungle; Tobacco and alcohol. Yep, you read that right, tobacco and alcohol. Now, we aren’t not talking about a fifth of Cuervo and a pack of Marlboro Reds, but I’ll be damned if Mamerto, one of our hosts at the lodge didn’t mix up a concoction of tobacco leaves and rubbing alcohol to alleviate my bite.

After making a sort of loose paste with the mixture, he gently applied it to the area where I had been stung. Then Mamerto told me to wait until it dried up and fell off. I made myself as comfortable as possible at the breakfast table and sipped my first coffee of the day. The cooling sensation of the jungle remedy helped to soothe some of the discomfort and helped to reduce the swelling seemingly within seconds.

As I nibbled at my breakfast, I kept checking the homemade ointment and noticed a significant decrease in the pain from the sting. By the time I had finished my eggs, the pain was gone and my foot seemed very close to normal. Before the second cup of coffee was empty, the paste had already dried and had begun to flake off. The area where I had been stung was no longer red, but was un-swollen, and free of pain, all thanks to my Shaman, Mamerto.

This week on WAIM Radio we are spending a full hour with the bugs, insects, and tiny creepy crawlies. Do you have a favorite tune about insects? Tell us all about it.

Be sure to tune in Friday live at Noon Eastern on Suburbs Radio to hear the show live as it airs. New episodes are also archived here at WAIM each Tuesday. Feel free to go back and listen to any of our episodes at any time in the WAIM Radio archive.

Cheers,
Matty C

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