Lice

These are harmless little critters that live on the bodies of people who don’t wash too often. If you spend time with the locals in some areas you will pick up a few lice. Your friendly medic will give you a shampoo or similar for instant removal. The real problem with lice is social – you may clear a space at the bar.

Ticks

Ticks are little insects which bury their head in your flesh and suck your blood. The blood tends to fill up the body of the tick which appears like a sack the size, perhaps, of your little finger nail. Ticks carry tick-bite-fever and prefer to attach themselves around your groin. For years we used to take them off by blowing out a match as soon as it was lit and using the hot head to burn the creature. If the procedure was done correctly, and there was a knack to it, then the tick would release its grip and come away. The thing is if you just try to pull a tick off you it grips hard and the body comes away leaving the head inside your flesh. This will then become infected.

In recent times the French have invented a little gadget designed to remove ticks and issued it to their troops. You can buy one in any chemist in Europe now. It is so simple yet 100% effective. All you get is a little plastic handle with a ‘V’ notch at the business end. You slide the V between the skin and the head of the tick and twist. The tick comes away in one piece without any problem. Anyone can do it first time. I always carry one in Europe as you never know when a tick will strike – my dogs and I pick them up regularly.

Worms

These come in many shapes and sizes but for the purposes of my simple explanation I shall split them into two types. There are skin worms and there are gut worms. Skin worms are laid as eggs, by insects, either directly onto your skin or onto plants which you then brush against to collect them. The eggs hatch and burrow under the skin as a worm. In parts of Africa the natives, seeing a worm under the skin as a white-ish line, make a cut at one end of the line and tease out the end of the worm. The end is then attached to a stick and the worm, often over a foot long, is withdrawn by winding it around the stick. No doubt a painful process.

Gut worms live in your intestine and share your food. A couple of hundred years ago fashionable ladies in Europe used to eat a few worm eggs to help keep their weight in check. So you will gather that the main effect, apart from infection and the gross-out factor, is that you lose weight as they induce nausea.

You will come across the eggs on grass and other vegetable matter. They are too small to notice but they are excreted there by other carriers of worms. The worm eggs stick to your hands or body and find their way to your mouth. Once inside they hatch, hook on the inside of your intenstine and grow happily. Take care eating fruit and other vegetable matter or touching livestock – foodstuffs and hands should be washed thoroughly to get the worm eggs off.

Rats

In themselves, rats are nice little creatures and make excellent pets. If they get at your food however, they can be a problem. The issue is not what they eat, as they don’t eat much, but what they spoil or, worse, what they infect without your knowledge. Rats crap on your food and their crap carries diseases such as typhoid and plague. Yes, people do still die in droves of plague every year. Rats also are prone to carry rabies. Though this is not easy to catch it is very nasty. Fortunately, you have to be bitten to catch rabies so watch your fingers. Less fortunately, a rat with rabies gets tetchy and prone to bite. You need to take the rabies anti-dote as soon as possible.

Scorpions

I like scorpions. They are excellent little things. But they do have quite a powerful sting. For what it is worth, the bigger, black scorpions with big claws tend to have milder poison than the little pale ones with small claws. The thing is, even though a scorpion sting is not likely to kill a fit man it is extremely painful.

A friend of mine, a very tough 30-year-old paratrooper from the French Foreign Legion was stung in the middle of his back by a scorpion which crawled into his sleeping bag one night in Zululand. He was rolling over and over around the floor putting on a performance for some time. Everyone thought it was hilarious and we laughed until we cried. All of us except him of course.

Scorpions hunt little creatures like insects. They don’t intentionally seek to bother people. But they do like a nice warm place to sleep during the day so beware of them getting into your sleeping bag or your boots. Make it a habit every morning to turn your boots upside down and bang them together to shake out any sleeping scorpions which were attracted by the warmth the previous evening. Presuming you get to take your boots off to sleep of course.

Camel Spiders

Camel spiders – Solifugae – are a particular type of arachnid and not actually a spider at all. Neither do they eat camels. There are a great many horror stories told about them but though there are hundreds of types found in deserts all over the world there is only one in India which is at all poisonous. They are quick and will nip hard if abused but otherwise they are harmless and just look like something from a sci-fi film. They are found in Afghanistan so be prepared to stumble across them if you are going on operations shortly.

A camel spider eating a large cricket. Officially they can grow up to 8in in size but there have been sightings of far larger camel spiders by troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their sting is nasty but not dangerous. (Corbis)

Other insects

As a general rule a brightly coloured insect is not trying to hide, it is saying, ‘Watch out I am dangerous!’ Avoid insects of this kind and as a general rule assume spiders to be poisonous. Many are but relatively few have venom strong enough to harm a human. But you never know which is which do you?

Snakes

Outside the Arctic Circle I think it is only Ireland that doesn’t have snakes, and this is courtesy of Saint Patrick. So wherever you go there will be snakes to a greater or lesser degree. The thing is, snakes, except for a couple of species out of the many thousands, are not aggressive towards humans. They feel the vibration of your approach, as they are deaf, and they clear off out of your way.

Crushing-type snakes like pythons can’t harm you and the poisonous types would rather not meet you. They have their own lives to live which centre around catching rats and mice and so forth. Even in countries where there are many snakes you will probably never see one. The closest you will come, unless you are looking for one to eat, will probably be to see the tracks of a snake where it has crossed a dirt road or see the skin it has shed.

The only things you have to watch out for with snakes is surprising one in the latrine, in a thatched roof or in your sleeping bag. If cornered a lot of snakes will go for you and many will kill you. They are surprisingly fast. Take no chances. Assume the snake is poisonous unless you are an expert.

A friend of mine, the author Yves Debay from the Belgian Congo, came across a highly poisonous adder in his sleeping bag. Being of that frame of mind he killed it with his knife, skinned it and ate it raw. Snake tastes like chicken, better if you are hungry. Some Africans have a big issue with snakes, considering them to be taboo or evil spirits or some such thing. Yves was held in awe by many Africans. Some Europeans too come to think of it.

Big critters

Of all the big cats, leopards eat by far the most people and even come into town to eat dogs left outside at night. They won’t approach a bunch of men, and neither will lions. Tigers, however, will occasionally creep up behind and take a man from the back. Where there are tiger, the locals often wear a mask on the back of the head as they allegedly won’t attack someone facing them.