The Botfly

Before I start this entry, I need to warn you, the reader, that this ‘adventure’ is kind of gross. It didn’t happen to me, but to a friend. However, since I’m trying to provide you a glimpse of my life here, I feel like I need to write about it. So if you are eating or get grossed out easy, it would probably be best to end your reading right here. For those who like to take a walk on the side, come on, let’s go.

You may recall my friend, Franco, who was mentioned last month in regards to the world map project I help him with at this site. As noted, he will be leaving Panama soon, because his two years of service are up. He’s done some great work in his community and for that hard work; Panama repaid him with a nice going away gift. Two botflies!

What does a botfly do? According to Wikipedia, Botflies deposit eggs in a host body, or sometimes use an intermediate vector: common houseflies for example. The smaller fly is firmly held by the botfly female and rotated to a position where the botfly attaches some 30 eggs to the body under the wings. Larvae from these eggs, stimulated by the warmth of a large mammal host, drop onto its skin and burrow underneath.

As you can see, it’s not something you want to be dealing with. To compound the problem for Franco, the bits took place right about his upper lip. This led to just a tad bit of swelling:


With his lip looking like he went a few rounds with Roberto Duran, Franco went to have things checked out. Given a variety of medicine, the swelling eventually went down. Then he shaved off his wanna be campo mustache, which left him looking like this:



Not too good. Plus, he said whenever he would get hot (easy to do in this country) the paid would be excruciating. Oh and occasionally, the holes would seep out some blood. So Franco went to Panama City to have it checked out. And sure enough, they were botflies. In his own words, he said the suckers came ‘shooting right out’ at the doctors.

Hello, friends.

Not to worry, though. A week later Franco’s face is basically healed, so his dashing good looks remain intact. Plus there are no term health reminders from this mishap. Well, other than this entry and the photos.

Note: If you want to see a video about a botfly coming out, you can watch this. Again, it’s not for the faint of heart.