idiotpruf

The blog that prevents scurvy…as long as you eat orange slices while you read it.

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Crazy Stinging Amazonian Bastard Ants

nerd idiotprufs ants

The Crazy Stinging Amazonian Bastard Ant. How would like to get a package of these?

In a previous post, But Seriously, I described my use of Crazy Stinging Amazonian Bastard Ants when dealing with critics. When I receive criticism I feel is unwarranted, I drop a package in the mail to the critic. The package contains a colony of the ants in question. The label on the package reads: shake roughly before opening. (The only thing Crazy Stinging Amazonian Bastard Ants hate more than critics is to be shaken roughly.)

Note: For criticism to reach the Crazy Stinging Amazonian Bastard Ant level, it has to really hurt my feelings; if I exhale a feeble whimper followed by a pained, why, upon receiving the criticism, you’re getting ants in the mail.

It would seem there are some people out there who don’t believe that Crazy Stinging Amazonian Bastard Ants are real. People who suddenly seem to be experts on Amazonian wildlife and entomology. People who say they’ve done their own research and can’t find any evidence of the existence of such an insect.

Hey people, Wikipedia doesn’t know everything.

These people claim that no self-respecting taxonomist would give an ant such a silly name.

Things are often given weird or inappropriate names. Have you ever seen a person and immediately thought to yourself: that person’s parents misnamed him; his name should be Rat-Bastard Morgan instead of Piers.

Note: my deepest apologies to Piers Morgan and his family, that was entirely uncalled for, but I really like that joke.

They also say that ants don’t sting: they bite.

Nature provides us with many oddities and exceptions: mammals don’t lay eggs, but the duck-billed platypus does. Birds don’t swim underwater, but penguins do. Humans don’t shed their skin like snakes, but Hugh Hefner did. The list goes on and on.

Note: my apologies to Hugh Hefner and his family–may he rest in peace–but he was kind of a snake.

Let’s say for the sake of argument, the name Crazy Stinging Amazonian Bastard Ants is in fact, a product of my fertile if not slightly warped mind.

Who’s to say such an insect doesn’t already exist. There have been over 400 hundred new species of plants and animals discovered in the Amazonian rain forest in recent years, including a monkey that purrs like a kitten and a vegetarian piranha.

Note: the vegetarian piranha was classified as Piersus Morganus, the monkey they called Ted.

Perhaps one of those 400 hundred discoveries is an insect whose sheer nature and attributes demand it be classified as a Crazy Stinging Amazonian Bastard Ant.

Just the other day I read an article about a researcher on the Amazon River who discovered a previously unknown water fowl. The water fowl was infested with a previously unknown type of tick. The tick bit the researcher and infected him with a previously unknown and highly infectious disease.

The disease would have incubated within his body over a period of months and the researcher would have unwittingly unleashed a devastating epidemic upon the populace.

Half the population would have suffered from the following symptoms:

  • Nausea.
  • Dizziness.
  • A rash on their butts in the shape Mickey Rooney’s face.
  • A rash on their faces in the shape of Mickey Rooney’s butt.
  • Dry mouth.
  • Itchy scalp.
  • Dry itchy mouth and or scalp.
  • All cheese will taste like wire.
  • All other food will taste like cheese, but the nasty kind like Limburger.
  • Migraines.
  • Chipmunks will throw pine cones at their heads.
  • Migraines from being hit in the head with pine cones.
  • They would have become obsessed with Kayne West and Kim Kardashian, droning on endlessly about their babies and how beautiful and perfect their lives are.

The other half of the population would have become depressed and suicidal, mostly due to the fact that the first half of the population were droning on endlessly about Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, their babies and how beautiful and perfect their lives are.

Luckily the researcher was then bitten by a common poisonous snake and died straight away.

The point being: for all you critics out there doubtful of the existence of Crazy Stinging Amazonian Bastard Ants, you might just receive a package in the mail containing a hive of Raging Bolivian Biting Wasps. Remember to shake it roughly.

Addendum:

I know there are some of you out there who are doubtful of the monkey that purrs like a kitten and the vegetarian piranha. Do you think I just make this stuff up?

nerd monkey idiotprufs

Ted, the monkey that purrs like a kitten.

Was That a Screeching Brazilian Stink Monkey?

Screeching Brazilian Stink Monkey?

I have a phobia.

A fear that creeps upon me and slowly overwhelms me. A fear that causes me to lay awake at night, tossing, turning, afraid to fall asleep for fear of what might happen while I’m slumbering.

What is this fear that has me in such a state of paranoia?

I fear that a roving horde of screeching Brazilian stink monkeys will break into my home and handle all my possessions with their filthy stink monkey paws. I fear that they will rub my possessions all over their parasite infested bodies and then return them to their exact position of origin, leaving me to only guess of their nefarious activities.

My friends tell that I’m crazy.

Am I crazy. Am I really?

When I get up in the morning, I find everything in exactly the same position that I left it the night before! Typical screeching Brazilian stink monkey behavior.

My friends persist with the idea that I’m crazy for two specific reasons:

  1. Monkeys tend not to be fastidious creatures and are far more likely to scatter things about and pee on them, than return them to their place of origin.
  2. There is no such creature as the screeching Brazilian stink monkey. They seem smugly confident about this point–hey, Wikipedia doesn’t know everything.

According to National Geographic, 1,200 new species of plants and vertebrates were discovered in the Amazon between the years 1999 and 2009 alone. With that many new species being discovered, one of them is bound to be a monkey, a monkey that by its sheer characteristics and nature, could only be called a Screeching Brazilian Stink Monkey.

My paranoia has become so profound that my friends have suggested medication. The doctor (another apparent expert of Amazonian wild life) concurred. I’m now on an experimental drug called Oxymoron-gubernatorial-toxin. It seems to be working, there are however a few slight side effects:

  • Dizziness.
  • Dry mouth.
  • Itchy rashes shaped like Lake Titicaca.
  • The inability to say Lake Titicaca without giggling uncontrollably.
  • Your left ear will fall off at really inconvenient times.
  • Nausea.
  • More nausea.
  • Vomiting.
  • Even more nausea.
  • Squirrels will steal your mail.
  • Sleeplessness caused by nausea.
  • Random baboon attacks. (They’re obviously in cahoots with the screeching Brazilian stink monkeys.)
  • The theme to Gilligan’s Island will get stuck in your head.
  • Coma.

Everything seems to be going well; I sometimes get nauseous when I have to chase squirrels or bend over to pick up my ear.

But now and then, out of the corner of my eye, I think I see a screeching Brazilian stink monkey, just waiting to handle all of my possessions.

lake titicaca

That red line is particularly itchy.

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