Camel Spider...Not Always A Bad Thing!

This actually took place about a month ago but I just thought about it today and I thought it would be a good one for the blog. Plus on the heels of my recent blogging award, I should at least make an effort in my last couple of weeks here to pass on a few stories.

I take you back to mid-March. It was very early in the morning, too early for the sun to be up. The warm weather had not yet taken hold in Baghdad so there was a crisp chill to the air. Cool enough that I hadn't broken a sweat yet I was in full body armor with a full combat load of ammo and walking through a field in the southern part of the city. We had gotten called out to investigate a "suspicious" item which was reported to be in this field. The report was not clear as to where in the field this item was however. We had fanned out and begun our search. I was walking on the far end of the line. I have a light fixed to my helmet and I was panning back and fourth looking at the ground. My body was tired but I was fully awake courtesy of the landmine threat in this area.

I walked for what seemed like a couple of minutes. As I panned to the left, I caught a glimps of what I thought was a small LED light on the ground. I froze in my tracks. I had one foot off the ground at the time and I held it there. I've seen a few types of devices over here which have used sensors to detect movement, then they blow up! The circuitry they use have little LED lights on them. A wave of terror came over me and I tensed what felt like every muscle in my body. If you have ever been in a car accident. That tensed up, gut wrenching feeling you get just as you realize you are about to be hit by another car, that's what I felt. A few seconds had passed and I realized nothing had happened. I was very confused. I moved my head a litte bit further to the left and my light panned over. The small light I saw was my helmet light reflecting off a camel spider's eye. It was just standing there, staring at me. This thing was HUGE. Funny thing is, I'm not much for spiders and I was actually dreding seeing these mamoth spiders over here. However, at this particular moment. I was so happy to see this was a spider and not something that was going to really ruin my day by blowing me up. It was still looking at me. Then, it scurried past me and went off into the darkness beyond the range of my light.

I could now feel my heart pounding from all the adrenalin my body had just released. I was now sweating buckets. I pulled myself together and continued my search. One of our guys finally found what we were looking for and we went back to the base.

So that's the story of my first encounter with a camel spider. Hope you enjoyed it!

G