Not half as enjoyable as smoking black-tar heroin

The bullet ant, Paraponera clavata, rates a 10.0+ on the Fumpson Pain Graph of Bug Stings, giving the gigantic, Central American super-ant the supreme rating on this unneighborly list. Experts have compared the bullet ant’s sting to “brushing your teeth with an arc welder.”

The unearthly, all-consuming pain guns full throttle for 24 hours, leaving the human nervous system scrambled like a squillion eggplants in a gravitational vortex.

The tarantula hawk swoops in a distant second with a sting (Fumpson 8.9) that feels exactly like “zombie piranhas soul-kissing your liver.”

One insect Fumpson and his fellow researchers failed to test was the dragonfly.

“I find that oversight inexplicable,” reports K. Lucy Grudd, PhD, the renowned Cornell University entomologist and author of the controversial Anisopteran tome, The Fun Stops Here.

K. Lucy Grudd with her lab assistant, Fessica Fuller

“More than two hundred thousand years ago, Neanderthal ranchers on the Iranian steppe documented the deadly sting of the bull’s-eye boghaunter, a pugnacious dragonfly that tormented the ox herds of these no-nonsense hominids,” Dr. Grudd explains. “Neanderthals weren’t pussies, but this boghaunter definitely gave them the jumps.”

Grudd goes on to describe how millennia later Mongol yak soldiers publicized stories across Kublai Khan’s empire about three-pace emeralds whose sting could liquefy a grown man’s brainstem in seconds.

“Gauchos of the Argentine Pampas still refer to the flame-tailed pondhawk, an uncommon, but maniacal vagrant from South America’s equatorial riverlands, as el asesino de caballos, or the horse killer,” Grudd recounts. “The scientific evidence is breathtaking: dragonflies are top-tier stingers—and their sting is monotonously fatal.”

Neanderthal rancher

Mongol yak soldier

Photo by Greg Lasley

Compelling collegial confirmation…

Hilario Rossi, professore emerito of entomology at the University of Verona, offers grudging support for Grudd’s stunning hypothesis. “The data are troubling,” he admits. “History suggests that people stung by dragonflies invariably succumb to a brisk yet unutterably horrifying death.”

Professor Rossi adds that eyewitnesses to dragonfly attacks appear victimized by post-traumatic amnesia, a disassociative fugue so powerful all knowledge of the incident is erased not only from their individual memories, but also from the collective unconscious for miles around.

“Dr. Grudd’s anecdotal morsels are delectable, but her methodology lacks significant nutritive value,” Rossi opts to point out. “In contrast, my own research does indicate these grisly encounters with uncanny feral dragonflies, or UFDs, have occurred and continue to occur—and the subsequent stings are one-way tickets to the deepest circle of a high-end abyss.”

True Dragonfly Tales

Close encounters of the hideous kind

Rory “Scuffy” Tumples had just turned 20 years old when he experienced the monstrous outcome of a dragonfly sting. A foreign-exchange student from Minnesota, Scuffy was studying library science on the Victoria University Footscray Park campus in Melbourne, Australia.

Invited by his new Aussie college friends, Bogan and Derro, to go on a hike in nearby Tophet Park, Scuffy was blazed on Purple Trainwreck hash oil when he spotted an extraordinarily huge insect perched on the tip of a cattail. Intrigued, the young American began drifting in that direction.

“We yelled at him to stop,” Bogan recalled. “That’s a wandering psychonaut, mate, we shouted.”

“Scuffy just told us to get stuffed,” Derro said.

“The dragonfly popped over and stung the galah’s face like a hammer drill—brrr-da-dada-da-dada-da-brrr.”

“Scuffy’s head swelled up like a royal-show pumpkin.”

“You should have heard his screams,” Bogan groaned, his eyes going wide. “Like a nanny goat getting chomped up by one of those saltwater crocodiles.”

“We could still hear poor Scuffy screaming when we got back to our dorm,” Derro whispered, “and that’s at least two miles from the park.”

Mates for life

Bogan and Derro

Wandering Psychonaut

Professor Hilario Rossi • Q & A

Rory Tumples somehow survived his “scuffle with death.” Escape to the Bughouse sat down with Professor Hilario Rossi and asked how that was possible.

ETTB: Professor Rossi, Scuffy’s assailant was the wandering psychonaut dragonfly, a legendary odonate three times larger than the Satanist darner, the champion colossus of North America. Amazingly, Scuffy survived the encounter. How can you explain this queer miracle to our readers?
ROSSI: THC is the obvious answer. The lad had been vaping an unusually potent form of cannabis extract. Dragonfly venom is somewhat similar to the neurotoxin tetrodotoxin favored by the blue-ringed octopus, but with curious biochemical anomalies.

ETTB: What does that mean in this case?
ROSSI: Tetrahydrocannabidinol acted as a kind of ameliorating agent, marginally pacifying the effects of the dragonfly’s venom. Unfortunately, just like our octopus toxin, dragonfly venom has no known antivenom. The THC in Scuffy’s system dissipated even as the psychonaut’s venom intensified in toxicity. Even worse, the American lad apparently suffered life-vexing complications due to an array of comorbid conditions.

ETTB: That’s so true, Professor Rossi. Scuffy’s head never resumed its original shape—he’s what we are loathe to call an organic gooberhead mummy.
ROSSI: Yes, that is so tragic. I’m told he now has the operational intellect of a glazed donut.

ETTB: Oh, I do have one more question, Professor Rossi. How is it these three college students can remember their encounter with the wandering psychonaut?
ROSSI: Again, we have to fall back on my THC theory. As we all know, cannabis intoxication can temporarily distort and even cancel short-term memory processing. The lads were so baked—is that the right word?

ETTB: I think they say “gacked” in Australia.
ROSSI: Well, at all events, the THC level in their bloodstreams plainly thwarted the amnesia effects of both the dragonfly’s sting and its preternatural mind-wipe capabilities. That counteraction will wear thin in due course. The lads will mercifully forget about this harrowing episode. I’m happy to say sooner or later we, too, will forget. The dragonfly nations are constantly chipping away at our psychic barricades. It’s just something they do. Dragonflies are not of this world.

View the author’s dragonfly photos by visiting his Flickr album:

Dragonflies

Somewhat final analysis…

Of course, not all dragonflies sting like manticores. K. Lucy Grudd is the first to acknowledge that only livestock-dependent odonates have evolved functional stingers.

“All dragonflies bite, however,” she cautions. “Always wear falconry gloves when handling live specimens. My students have often sacrificed nut-sized chunks of flesh by ignoring this good-minded protocol.”