Post #203997 by mbonga on Wed, Dec 21, 2005 9:32 AM

If you like stories about jungles, here's a fictional one I recently read, with some choice quotes included below. The story wasn't very realistic, but it was very readable.

"Amazonia"
James Rollins
New York: Avon Books
2002

(p. 79)
Below, a vast sea of green spread to the horizon in all
directions. From this vantage, it was as if the entire world
were just forest. The only breaks in the featureless ex-
panse of the continuous canopy were the occasional giant
trees, the emergents, that poked their leafy crowns above
their bretheren, great monsters of the forest that served as
nesting sites for harpy eagles and toucans. The only other
breaks were the half-hidden dark rivers, snaking lazily
through the forest.

(p. 92)
"Don't complain. That's getting off cheap. There are
much worse insects out there, and I don't just mean the
big ones, like bird-eating spiders or footlong black scor-
pions. It's the little ones that'll get you. Are you familiar
with the assassin bug?"
"No, I don't think so," Frank said.
Kelly shook her head, too.
"Well, it has the unpleasant habit of biting and defecat-
ing at the same time. Then when the victim scratches the
wound, he drives the feces loaded with the protozoan Tri-
panozoma crusii into the bloodstream. Then in anywhere
from one to twenty years you die due to damage to the
brain or heart."
Frank paled and stopped scratching at the fly bite on
his neck.
"Then there are the blackflies that transmit worms to
the eyeball and cause a disease called river blindness.
And sand flies that can trigger Leishmaniasis, a leprosy
type of disease."

(p. 91)
And though the vegetation down at this level was
scant, it was not nonexistent. The floor was festooned
with fan-tailed ferns, thorny bromeliads, graceful or-
chids, and slender palms, and everywhere around were
draped the ubiquitous ropelike vines called lianas.

(p. 92)
"And are you prepared for the candiru?"
Her brow crinkled. "What type of disease is that?"
"It's not a disease. It's a common little fish in the wa-
ters here, sometimes called the toothpick fish. It's a slen-
der creature, about two inches long, and lives parasiti-
cally in the gills of larger fish. It has the nasty habit of
swimming up the urethras of human males and lodging
there."
"Lodging there?" Frank asked, wincing.
"It spreads its gill spines and embeds itself in place,
blocking the bladder and killing you most excruciatingly
in about twenty-four hours."
"How do you get rid of it?"
By now, Kelly had recognized the little fish's descrip-
tion and nasty habits. She had indeed read about them.
She turned to her brother and said matter-of-factly, "The
only cure is to cut the victim's penis off and extract the
fish."

[ Edited by: mbonga 2005-12-21 09:35 ]

[ Edited by: mbonga 2005-12-21 11:58 ]

[ Edited by: mbonga 2005-12-21 12:15 ]

[ Edited by: mbonga 2005-12-21 12:26 ]