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See also the NEW thread:

Touch 'Em All: The 'EWWWW!' Factor
[GIANT "camel spiders" menace our troops in Iraq]
TheWBALChannel.com ^ | April 9, 2004 | Larry Frum, Jr., Managing Editor
Posted on 04/10/2004 2:38:36 AM PDT by RonDog

The "EWWW!" Factor
My brother is a member of the United States armed forces. I can't tell you what he does, because I don't think I completely understand it myself -- which is probably best for me.
However, with all that is going on over in Iraq, he does have a pretty good sense of what some of the personnel are going through over there. His latest e-mail makes me wonder if we here at home really understand.
Take a look at this picture:
This is a camel spider (or rather two of them) -- one of the indigenous creatures in Iraq. The following is from an e-mail my brother sent me with the picture:
The camel spider isn't really a spider, because it is also called a wind scorpion, but it is not a scorpion either. It is related to both the spiders and the scorpions, and it belongs to its own group of animals.
It can be as long as 6 inches across and camel spiders like to live in barren parts of the desert. They don't like oases either, and they feel most at home in the open, uninhabited places of the desert.
Most of the time camel spiders hide in their burrows, coming out only when they're hungry. So when they do come out at night to feed, they are very ferocious and dangerous. A hunting camel spider runs across the desert floor almost at lightning speed, and it is so fast that it is impossible for the human eye to follow...
-- snip --
...One guy said he killed about a dozen of these things because they kept coming into their tent.
While they knew they weren't poisonous, they still freaked out the soldiers -- especially the new ones...
Ya think?
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