During a single night of camping, an insect and two non-insect arthropod encounters made for a memorable time. Krause Springs is a beautiful campsite with both a natural fed pool and a swimming pool down below.

Taking a break from swimming, I went to grab a sip of my drink. When I took a sip from the straw, a bee was sucked into my mouth. Now this was my first time having a bee in my mouth, but I knew exactly what it was without seeing more bees come crawling out of the straw. All of the little hairs that are so good at holding pollen were setting off my senses. The bee didn’t seem to want to be there either as it was squirming around trying to get out. I opened my mouth and it crawled out across my upper lip. My friend brushed it off my face and somehow I hadn’t gotten stung and the bee wasn’t hurt either. It took a while for the tickling feeling of the hairs to fade away though.

The night went by without another incident and in the morning we decided to go back to the pool. Most creepy crawlies don’t really bother me, but there are exceptions. One is the “red-headed centipede”. It is big and you can distinctly see each of its long legs. Although not an insect, but an Arthropod of order Chilopoda– I felt this organism noteworthy. And there it was-at the bottom of the pool, all 6-8 inches of it. The solution seemed simple, use a broom to just scoop it out of the pool.

My friend really only has a problem with spiders. Perhaps a bit more than a dislike, he has a bit of a phobia. But a centipede was no problem so he agreed to grab the broom and get it out. The end of the broom was resting on the well that fed the pool and had sheltered from sight the largest spider I have ever seen. Another non-insect Arthropod- this spider was the material of children’s nightmares. Now it was crawling up the broom handle and now my friend was gone.

The camping trip was over.

PC. Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, 2015