Close Encounters of the Bot Fly kind

The well known association with darkest Peru is Paddington Bear, but many people will think of hot and humid jungles where creatures are lurking in the undergrowth, waiting to pounce as you pass by! Stories of giant Anacondas, man-eating piranhas and savage cats have all helped to enhance the image of a ’green hell’, images exaggerated by traveller’s tales over the years.

Early this century the explorer Colonel Percy Fawcett talked about man-eating Piranhas and giant Anacondas on his travels in ’darkest Peru’. One of his strangest stories was about natives making whistling noises to get maggots to come out of the sores on a man’s back. Was this fact, or a ridiculous myth?

I had the privilege to be a guide at Explorer’s Inn in the rainforests of SE. Peru and I soon learnt that most traveller’s tales are vastly exaggerated. Piranhas are far less menacing than they are made out to be, just small fish with fierce looking teeth. As a guide I would chuck pieces of meat into a lake to feed the piranhas, then dive in where the piranha were feeding. Much to the disappointment of my groups nothing ever happened. As for large Anacondas and big cats like the Jaguar any threat is minimal and if you do see one (and you certainly need a lot of luck) you should feel privileged, not petrified!

The real danger in the rainforest realm comes from biting insects and associated danger of disease. However, with the right precautions you are unlikely to suffer and, in reality, the Amazon is quite a safe domain. Always eager to explore I never felt threatened or in any danger when wandering through the rainforest. But I never imagined that one day I would actually be incorporated into the rainforest food chain - and live to tell the tale!

One day I scratched the side of my head and felt a slight bump, obviously a recent mosquito bite. However, over the next few days the bump continued to grow .... and something inside started to move! My curiosity aroused I got someone to have a peek and, as anticipated, my bump had a hole in the middle like a boil with a hole! I had become the host to a sututu - the maggot of a ’botfly’!

The botfly looks like a housefly and has a bizarre life cycle. The botfly catches a mosquito and manages to lay an egg on it. As the mosquito feeds on the blood of a victim the botfly larvae hatches, moves across to the host, and starts to feed. But be warned, botflys also lay eggs on sweaty clothing left in the open overnight. If someone puts on a sweaty shirt the next day they could get more than they bargained for. So remember to wash your clothes regularly in the Amazon.

Once the sututu has settled down in its new home the area around it starts to swell and to resemble a boil with a hole in the middle. If the sututu has taken up residence on an accessible part of the body you will actually get to see your guest. To breathe the sututu waves an appendage out of the hole ever so often.

However, I was unable to watch my sututu’s progress since it was on the side of my head. I was disappointed since a dedicated sututu host can get quite attached to their ’pet’ and will look forward to its appearance at ’breathing’ time. But most ’victims’ are appalled by the horrific fact that they have a maggot under their skin and they will try anything to get rid of it.

They will squeeze the swelling in an attempt to eject the sututu, but success is unlikely. It is very difficult to get rid of a sututu before it wants to vacate the premises because of the spines that cover the body. Spines that are erected when someone tries to eject the sututu, wedging the maggot in its lair. So they then resort to poking things down the hole and pouring all kinds of preparations into the cavity to get rid of the sututu.

But this creates a catch-22 situation, if you manage to kill the sututu you can end up with a dead maggot in an unpleasant festering wound. Not the most ideal situation to get into in the sticky and sweaty conditions of the rainforest.

But instead of the ’stick’ approach you can always try the ’carrot’ approach. You can attempt to entice it out by, of all things, calling to the sututu. In darkest Peru the local people will make tutting noises over the swelling, rather like an old lady making noises of disapproval. Apparently the sututu peeks out of its hole to investigate the noise, at which point you squeeze hard to eject the maggot. Whistling at the right pitch is also supposed to work and this is the basis of Colonel Fawcett’s bizarre story.

After six weeks the bump on my head had grown to the size of a large grape and was aching due to the stretched skin. I could feel my sututu moving from time to time, a distinctly odd feeling, but it never hurt me. As it feeds an anaesthetic is released.

Note the my by the way, I was now getting quite attached to my sututu and I had even given ’him’ a name, ’Boris the botfly’. Left alone my sututu would have been about inch long when it finally moved out to pupate.

Sadly, with the ache caused by the stretched skin, I finally decided to evict my sututu. As tourists looked on one of the local staff carefully shaved away the hair from a small area around the swelling. Next he blocked off the breathing hole with nicotine and put a plaster over it. His plan was to suffocate the sututu but I wasn’t very happy about this. I didn’t want a dead maggot rotting away in a wound on the side of my head! Instead I suggested trying to ’evict’ the sututu about hour later when it was still alive, but short of breath.

At the appointed time the plaster was peeled back and the maggot reared half way out of the hole, much to the horror and disbelief of the audience! My swelling was then squeezed really hard and, as I flinched, there was a quiet ’pop’ as the sututu flew out of my head, dispersing terrified tourists in all directions, before landing on the floor.

A little while later I was holding the sututu I had nurtured for so long, a larvae that would have been a good sized maggot by a fisherman’s’ standards. In a certain way I felt guilty at evicting my sututu. It never harmed me and I had the privilege, as a naturalist, to be part of the rainforest food chain for a while!