Live Earthlings: Part Two: Attack Of The Water Bear

If you remember, yesterday our little river adventure paused for a chillin' out break in a clear sandy stretch of the Waccasassa ... little did we know, we were being stalked.

A water bear surfaces near our break spot, intent on finding prey.
An unsuspecting Jonathon cleans gravel from his shoes as the water bear approaches.

The attack of the water bear, when it came, was vicious, but Jonathon used the wet hair flail technique to distract and defeat the beast.

Silly, I know, but ya' gotta play. All eco-trash pickup and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

When the break ended, the boys returned to searching diligently for litter.

They really got into it.

Anybody sense a sense of accomplishment here?

"The haul of trash"

Here's the debris the boys cleaned from the Waccasassa.

A scared crawfish and a mad madtom catfish.

Back at the house, the wet and tired boys were excused from gear cleanup after they unloaded the canoes. They dashed to the showers and I began hosing off gear and sorting the trash they found.

Throughout the day, an assortment of crawfish had wiggled out of the bottles and cans that the boys had collected. When noticed, these little river denizens were flipped back into the river. A few crawfish and one small catfish made it back to the house. I met the catfish as I sorted the trash for the blue tarp litter layout picture.

As I reached to pick up the top of a beer bottle that had broken in transit, I felt a sharp pain in my middle finger. For about 5 seconds, I thought I had just stuck myself on the broken glass, but then an intense burning sensation began. It was painful enough that I actually looked in the bottle to make sure there wasn't a young water moccasin in there. Something had definitely got me and I needed to know what it was.

Instead of a snake, I found this little 5 inch long madtom catfish wiggling around in the broken remains of the beer bottle.

Arrrghhh! I've been stung by these little buggers before and they pack an amazing wallop for a fish that only reaches 6 inches in length.

(This one is now swimming in my 750 gallon aquaculture tank)

About 20 minutes later, just about the time required to put away the canoes and gear, the pain subsided and ebbed away. That was a long 20 minutes. I rate it just as bad as a larger saltwater catfish sting, but not even on the radar screen of pain compared to stingray sting.

(Yes, I have been stung alot, by a wide selection of stingers)

Just more proof that no good deed goes unpunished.