190 Naturalist at Large 



They said, "Certainly. We have a deer which we killed 

 this morning hidden within a hundred yards of where we 

 are now," I told Juicio to give it to me for old times' sake. 

 Within ten minutes he turned up with a brocket, dressed 

 and with the head cut off. I gave the little deer to the 

 drillers and they certainly thought that we were magicians. 



In Darien Brooks and I suffered several times from find- 

 ing the larvae of a botfly in our skin. Curiously enough 

 the eggs seemed to be laid usually between our shoulder 

 blades in a particularly difficult place to scratch. The larvae 

 grew fast and caused great discomfort, and being beset 

 with sharp, spiny hairs they cannot be gotten out by or- 

 dinary pinching and squeezing. We knew from the natives 

 that they could be narcotized by tobacco juice and we 

 chewed up pieces of cigars, rubbed the tobacco juice on 

 the area, and when we ceased to feel the larvae wiggling 

 under our skin we found that they were stupefied by the 

 nicotine and could then be popped out. 



The grubs of this botfly were relatively few and far 

 between until years later a lot of infested cattle were 

 brought into the Canal Zone pastures from the Orinoco 

 River district in Venezuela. I often saw these in the pastures 

 near Summit in Panama. The flies which they brought in 

 with them multiplied until the cattle became a fearsome 

 sight, covered with festering, running sores so that they 

 became thin and poor from the pain created by the wab- 

 bles, and their skins were worthless when they were 

 slaughtered. 



I didn't learn until some years afterwards the curious 

 life history of this horrid pest. The fly itself, Dennatobia 



