I wanted to share with you a story that Rob shared with me a few days ago.
As most of you know, Rob spent October of 2006-November 2007 (with a little break in June) in Iraq as a combat infantryman. He has an infinitesimal amount of stories that are far too inappropriate to share in this blog or with most other humans, but this one should be tame enough provided you aren't too much of an arachnophobe.
One night Rob was getting ready to relieve a comrade from tower guard duty, which basically was comprised of standing in a tower at night and making sure nothing fishy happened down below. As he was taking over his shift, he noticed that his fellow soldier was particularly eager to leave.
The other soldier said, "There's a camel spider in here. I've been hunting it but I can't find it," and left.
For those of you who don't know,
this is what a camel spider looks like. Warning: scary gross spider picture.*
Rob began his tower guard shift--which lasted several hours--backed up against a corner of the tower with his night-vision goggles set to close-range instead of long-range, which is where they in theory should have been due to the fact that he was guarding from a tower.
He periodically saw the camel spider on the ceiling, but as he says, "It's hard to commit to swinging at something that's above your head. You run the risk of it bouncing and losing sight of it, or having it land on your face. I really wanted to shoot it."
Every time he'd see the camel spider he'd note the location and look away. When he'd look again at the same spot, the camel spider would've disappeared. Camel spiders, it should be noted, can reach up to 10mph at short distances.
Rob spent the entire guard shift on edge waiting for the camel spider to resurface once again (I'd like to interject at this point that this is a man who survived several IEDs, many firefights, and a bullet ricochet into his arm).
When another soldier came to relieve him, Rob said, "There's a camel spider in here, and it fucking teleports," and left.
In case you were wondering what actually happens in a war zone where a bunch of a men are cooped up together for long periods of time, from what I can tell, it's largely stuff like this.
*Interesting fact that I'm sure will put you at ease: camel spiders are arachnids but are not actually spiders. So you know, sleep well tonight. Suffice it to say Rob and his battle-hardened comrades were terrified of these little sonsofbitches, except for his best friend Trent who is petrified of birds but can handle horrifying monsters with no problem. Also, if you're like me, this photo will cause you to see scary spiders out of the corner of your eye all day, and for that I apologize.
