Has anyone got a remedy for alleviating the pain of Buffalo bean hairs.
Need this right away please.

Appently rubbing with ash works

Fine sandpaper and lots of grease - burn the clothes you were wearing as well.

Either rub vigorously with mud or wet sand. Or apply mud, let it dry and peel it off.

Neil is right. Get rid of all clothes and other items that have been contaminated.

Ozhunter,

You should be fine by now and it will be a good lesson. When in doubt in the bush keep away from any broad leaf vine. There are a couple that look similar to the buffalo bean and like I say avoid them all.

There are a lot of PH's here that when entering the thick stuff will not look ahead but more upwards and now you know why.

Thanks guys.
Thankfully it was one of the boys and not me.

Sadly, I managed to get whacked by buffalo beans before, as well as blister beetles!

And I can tell you, buffalo bean pales into insignificance compared with blister beetles.

Somehow I got it on the back of my neck, so the whole back of my neck got blistered!

The pain kept getting worse and worse for a few days, especially once the day gets warm, and my shirt collar kept rubbing on the wounds.

I had to turn my shirt neck inside out, to avoid touching the raw wounds.

Anna Marie was kind enough to have a few ointments that helped a bit, and Walter was calling me a wimp!?

I had his sympathy, though, a couple of years later.

I had a big blister on my right heel. And as I usually do, I pricked it to relieve the pressure.

This worked for a couple of days, then it started hurting quite a lot.

When I looked, I discovered that another blister formed undeneath the previous one, and the whole part had become infected!

The stink would have invited any hyaena within a mile downwind!

I pricked that one too, and filled the resulting hole with some perfume with a high alcohol content!

That was the end of the infection.

Walter said "If anyone needs any proof that you do not think while here this is it"

"What do you mean?"
Walter "You have been running around for miles with your foot in that state. Didn't it hurt you?"

"Yes, it hurt a bit"
Walter "You see, no matter what is wrong with you, if there is buffalo ahead, you feel nothing"

"Well, we did come here to hunt, so why let a little blister ruin that"

Walter "Little blister! If that was my foot, I would have stayed in bed"

"That just goes to show the difference between you and me"

The day I discovered that my foot was infected, we had walked 25 ks.

Wet tea bag- pores in the paper pull out the hairs...always carry a couple even though I never drink Tea!

Saeed - one up on your blister beetle story !!

Heading back into camp and needing to take a good dump,so I pulled over,ran into the bushes, dropped the rods, and took care of business.

A couple hours later, I was burning like hell, and not being able to see the problems,promplty scrathched them.Needless to say the acid spread down my legs overnight, and prevented me from wearing ANY clothing for a few days!! Not a pleasant thing.

I have since changed my bathroom habits, with a thorough inspection of the area, where not even a small ant or spider is safe. I learnt a lesson.

Eish, but there's a couple of nasty stories here!

Neil, Might be an idea to keep that one out of the memoirs!

Steve:

No poems, limmericks, or songs on this!

How about duct tape to pull the spines out. Press the tape over the area and pull it off along with the spines.

quote:

Originally posted by PSmith:
Steve:

No poems, limmericks, or songs on this!

Mate, sometimes I think you're a bit of a philistine!

With the itchy beans.... one way is to think like a warthog. first find a flatdog free wallow, get your kit off and wallow all over.... then wait for it to dry and crack the mud off..... if you're a hairy bugger it's gonna hurt like hell.

I reckon Don's tea bag method might be less painful and certainly more hygenic. Not as much fun for the spectators though!

Damn, but I could have done without some of the images provoked by reading this thread!

I have seen plenty of buffalo beans, but thank God I have so far managed to avoid coming into contact with them.

But I have never even heard of a blister beetle.

Does anyone have a photo of one?

What do they do that makes the blisters?

What are buffalo beans? Pictures?

quote:

Originally posted by Michael Robinson:
Damn, but I could have done without some of the images provoked by reading this thread!

I have seen plenty of buffalo beans, but thank God I have so far managed to avoid coming into contact with them.

But I have never even heard of a blister beetle.

Does anyone have a photo of one?

What do they do that makes the blisters?

Cantharidin. They are quite common in the lower midwest of the US.

They also happen to be lethal to horses when ingested in hay (alfalfa usually).

http://www.bing.com/images/sea...qpvt=blister+beetle#

This is good to know, as I will remember to never swallow one then!

One day I swallowed a tse tse fly, and everyone was laughing. We stopped the truck, and I got the Tabasco bottle out of the lunch box, and took a swig from it.

That gave the game scout and trackers a good laugh too.

quote:

Originally posted by Muletrain:
How about duct tape to pull the spines out. Press the tape over the area and pull it off along with the spines.

That may work for you hairless wonders, but those of us with a bit of pict or neanderthal in our recent ancestry would rather put up with the buffalo beans than strip fistfulls of hair using duct tape! Just carry a tea bag for the buffal beans and some alkali for the blister beatles...and some oxycodone for when you sit down on the loo for a late night ED and find that there is a parabuthus scorpion hiding under the seat....happened a couple of times at rifa- always in the girls ablutions- worse than smearing a little bit of buffalo bean hairs on the bog roll....

quote:

One day I swallowed a tse tse fly, and everyone was laughing. We stopped the truck, and I got the Tabasco bottle out of the lunch box, and took a swig from it.

Mopane bees are what I have heck with. They seem to fly right into my mouth when I need to take a deep breath.

Duct tape is great for those of Cro-magnon ancestry. Those from the Neanderthal tree would have a problem. I would suggest you trim the area and go for the tape rather than bare the pain. Treat with Preparation H afterwards; just like that new tattoo.
LDK

The things you learn here that you never wanted to know!

Never been to Africa (yet) but Elmer's Glue is now used in ER's to extract splinters and such. Goop it on. let it dry, peel it off. Works like a charm.

I've stayed away from buffalo bean luckily and from talking to folks that have gotten into it I don't wish to ever get any nearer to it than I've been. I honestly have never heard of a blister beetle but there is a nasty looking SOB in Zambia called a blister cricket. Anybody had an encounter with one of those sweethearts?

Mark

quote:

Originally posted by Ganyana:
worse than smearing a little bit of buffalo bean hairs on the bog roll....

I would think that is a prank that might end in gunfire.

Very interesting about the beetles. Thanks for the information and photographs.

Apparently, although ingestion of cantharidin can be fatal to humans (ten milligrams is said to be a fatal dose), it does have some, shall we say, bizarre side effects even in lesser doses.

From Wikipedia online encyclopedia:

Cantharidin, a type of terpenoid, is a poisonous chemical compound secreted by many species of blister beetle, and most notably by the Spanish fly, Lytta vesicatoria. The false blister beetles and cardinal beetles also have cantharidin.

Cantharidin was first isolated by Pierre Robiquet in 1810. It is an odorless and colorless solid at room temperature. It is secreted by the male blister beetle and given to the female during the mating. Afterwards the female beetle will cover its eggs with it as a defense against predators. The complete mechanism of the biosynthesis is currently unknown. If cantharidin is ingested, it severely irritates the urinary tract as it is excreted, causing swelling of the genitalia.

I guess that accounts for the reputation of Spanish fly!

Cantharidin is also the "beetle juice" that dermatologists use for removal of warts and tattoos!

Nasty stuff!

very interesting things here, and good stories! what is the deal with tsetse wings? do they make a person itch or they tickle or what?

Is it picts that were hairy? my ancestry is italian, sicilian, irish, cherokee, spanish, english, seriously a mutt. but majority is italian, sicilian, irish and cherokee. I always wondered where the hair came from. I'm the only one in my family that is a hairy bastard, and a redhead to boot. usually they're less hairy. I went once to have the hair on back waxed. at the time I was in great shape, flat stomach, big muscles but didn't look like just a gym rat, very balanced. so I wanted to go shirtless for the summer. damned if I barely made it through the first session. anybody seen 40year old virgin? yeah, painful.

fortunately now I'm married and have the wife help me with a special "body hair" electric razor thing. I guess i"ll make sure if I ever make it to africa I'm smooth as a baby's bottom first.

Red

Pulling a wing off stops 'em flying away and all they can do is sit wherever they land and gnaw!

The best place to do it is in a charter plane where the victim can't move around much to get to the tsetse so they have to sit and be chewed on...... and a tsetse bite feels like someone has stuck a red hot needle into you and hurts like hell.

That is wicked! HA I'll make sure to never sit in front of you.

Red

I gather, you're not talking about these.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12339061@N06/4548668123/


Grizz