[dudley]

Yesterday I wanted to get some ponded water off the pool cover
Stuck the old hose in and sucked to start the siphon
(The trick when you do this is to stop sucking before you get a mouthful)
This time I got the mouthful with a little surprise as well.
As soon as it hit, my mouth was on fire!!
I spit it out almost immediately and that probably saved me from more pain.
It was one of those little spun spider egg cases
What do you know? It seems that they contain a powerful toxin that deters predators
It burned my mouth something terrible, it even blackened the inside of my upper lip
Still hurts
Wow
Lesson learned

[Andrew]

OMFG - are you joking?

I just recently moved out of an enormous farm house, primarily because of the heating costs, but another huge factor was that there was a massive spider problem. I have never seen so many different sizes and colors. And the numbers were simply dazzling. There were spiders everywhere. I even had some of those huge 'bastahds that remind you of some Hollywood horror movie. All i needed was some bubble-headed blond bimbo running around screaming and I swear i could have won some awards.

[rlc]

A few years ago while my pool was being installed, I had to siphon some water, so I took a garden hose out of my shed, put one end in the water and started sucking on the other end to draw the water out. Unfortunately I didn't think to check inside the hose, where there were about 100 live ants. I've never gagged so much in my life...I could feel the ants clinging to the back of my throat and couldn't stop a lot of them from going down to my stomach. I'm not sure if this was better or worse than what happened to you!

[Andrew]

I once stood up a 300lb Auger (big drill, attaches to back of tracker) to lean it against the side of a barn during a "fall clean-up" on the farm I used to work at. With a little struggling I got it stood up. I began shifting it around to get it out of the way when I felt a sharp pain under my arm, about at my armpit.

It seems there was a hornet's nest in the Auger, a big one. The aggravated bees where scrambling up the sleeve of my flannel and stinging my arm. The thing was, I was already straining to hold up the Auger and couldn’t just let go or it would have fallen on other equipment I was working around.

It was hell. I stood there and got stung like five times on my arm and upper chest, all under my clothes, until I could shimmy the attachment enough to let go and tear off my flannel/shirt.

Lesson learned - check for bees first!