Escaped Lunatic
Barfly
Civet Burger? Sounds tempting. Can I get fries with that?
Posts: 567
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Post by Escaped Lunatic on Jul 4, 2006 21:53:53 GMT 7
OK, I know this is going to sound weird, but I have this problem with poisonous animals. It's not just a phobia, it's this strange way they have of finding me wherever I go. (That sounds so much like "I'm not paranoid, they really are out to get me.", doesn't it?) I've been bitten by a pygmy rattler in my own front yard (3 fun days in the hospital), and have had "close encounters" with all species of poisonous spiders and snakes available in Florida. Lest you think this is just a side effect of living in a swamp, I spent 5 weeks camped out at a workshop at Arcosanti in the Arizona desert. During that time, there were 2 rattlesnakes encountered. I was part of the group that ran into the snakes both times. There was also the scorpion awaiting me in the bathroom (I beat it to death with a shampoo bottle). Finally, there was the unknown creature that got into my tent and bit me on the arm, causing an amazing burning sensation and a 2 inch circle of my skin to shed for several weeks. Obviously, this isn't something I'm likely to discuss with a recruiter.  Thus, my question: Does anyone know of a reference guide to the assorted poisonous beasties of southern China? Perfect paranoia is perfect awareness. - Steven King |
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Post by Raoul Duke on Jul 4, 2006 22:58:18 GMT 7
Don't worry. The only venomous vermin I've ever seen in the wild in China was all running English schools.  Most of the wildlife in China was eaten thousands of years ago. You might encounter a snake if you go out running around in the jungle or turning over rocks in the mountains or some such...you aren't planning anything like that, are you? I'm not even aware of serious incidence of poisonous spiders here, much less anything eatin' size. Relax. |
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Escaped Lunatic
Barfly
Civet Burger? Sounds tempting. Can I get fries with that?
Posts: 567
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Post by Escaped Lunatic on Jul 5, 2006 0:00:37 GMT 7
Ummmmmmm.... then again, I do have this bad habit of wandering around lost in the woods/swamps/deserts/anywhere. Not that avoiding the wild areas will be any guarantee. I got tagged by a wood scorpion inside a very non-rural subdivision once.  "Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies." - Voltaire on his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he renounce Satan. |
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Post by Raoul Duke on Jul 5, 2006 0:49:32 GMT 7
Ummmmmmm.... then again, I do have this bad habit of wandering around lost in the woods/swamps/deserts/anywhere. Then don't come whining to us about poisonous animals!   |
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nolefan
Barfly
Quod me nutrit, me destruit!
Posts: 686
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Post by nolefan on Jul 5, 2006 5:05:51 GMT 7
wait until your first encounter with that deadly poisonous substance called baiju... scorpions will be the least of your worries
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Post by Missi on Jul 5, 2006 5:58:15 GMT 7
The only vermin you might see would be on a stick.
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Escaped Lunatic
Barfly
Civet Burger? Sounds tempting. Can I get fries with that?
Posts: 567
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Post by Escaped Lunatic on Jul 5, 2006 6:38:27 GMT 7
>>Ummmmmmm.... then again, I do have this bad habit of wandering around lost in the woods/swamps/deserts/anywhere.
>Then don't come whining to us about poisonous animals!
Not whining, I just need to know which bites I can laugh at, which ones I need to call an ambulance (BTW - What's the Chinese equivalent of dialing 911?), and which ones mean I need to get started writing my will immediately.
BTW - if you are ever bitten by a snake and it doesn't look like Count Dracula nailed you with a perfect set of fang-shaped puncture marks, bring the snake with you to the ER. The little horror that nailed me had fangs like hypodermic needles and barely left a mark. Every doctor and nurse in the place would look at my foot and ask 2 questions. "Are you sure you were bitten by a snake?" and "Are you sure it was a pygmy rattler?" Happily, my answer was sitting next to me in a Ragu jar. Even then they seemed doubtful, until the venom took hold and my leg started swelling at an alarming rate. Then they finally pumped me full of anti-venom (Surprise!!!! Guess what I turned out to be alergic to???)
"I think it would be a good idea."
- Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization
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Post by George61 on Jul 5, 2006 6:55:28 GMT 7
Lunatic! There is this little "quote" button. You see it there, in the second line of little buttons above where you are writing a reply? It's the second last button in the second row? Looks like a blue arrow sticking out of a book? Just a couple of buttons past the typewriter? Yeah, that's the one...You can hit that and this is the result.... Copy and paste!! I hope this is of some comfort to you.  |
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Post by Stil on Jul 5, 2006 7:18:30 GMT 7
If you go wadding around in rice paddies you might encounter a snake but there is a real dearth of wildlife around. The air and water are far more toxic than any of the animals and sometimes can bite you.
There are some foreign poisonous creepy crawlies from Australia around. Most of them post here and if you stay away from the bars you'll be ok.
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Post by Mr Nobody on Jul 5, 2006 7:42:23 GMT 7
People have eaten everything poisonous, as all the above said. Mostly they have hunted it out for medicine, and anyway, compared to real snakes and things (like in Oz) the only thing around of danger is members of the cobra family.
Can find some of the cobra family in the down south parts you are interested in. However, my wife lived in the mountains on a mine away from civilized parts for most of her growing up until high school, and she only saw dead ones being used for food or medicine. There are reputedly tigers in the forests, but no-one except hunters have ever seen them. They did find a large (maybe 5 m) Burmese python in a village near here a few days ago.
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Escaped Lunatic
Barfly
Civet Burger? Sounds tempting. Can I get fries with that?
Posts: 567
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Post by Escaped Lunatic on Jul 5, 2006 7:46:30 GMT 7
>Lunatic! There is this little "quote" button. Most of the time I've just used the Quick Reply box at the bottom of the page. It doesn't have all the features. Also, being painfully oldschool in email (Sprechen Sie ELM?), I always tended to use >, >>, etc. for quotes, even when it's not completely necessary. vs. >I hope this is of some comfort to you. I'm not really sure if I find it comforting or not.  "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." - Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977 |
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Post by George61 on Jul 5, 2006 7:51:30 GMT 7
Now you can upgrade to the Super New Full Reply system Why not? It takes your mind of venomous vermins!! |
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Post by acjade on Jul 5, 2006 8:05:40 GMT 7
Don't come near me if you're a magnet for creepy crawlies. Nothing personal, Lunie but I hate spiders and one of the things I like about Xi'an is I haven't seen a spider inside since being here. It gives me a secret and slightly guilty delight to see the little blighters skewered, barb-b-qued and offered as take away.
There's some sad and forlorn wildlife in the zoos but I think all the venomous snakes migrated to Australia eons ago to avoid being put in the hot pot or dried and powdered and stored in herbalists jars.
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Newbs
SuperDuperBarfly! 
If you don't have your parents permission to be on this site, naughty, naughty. But Krusty forgives
Posts: 2,085
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Post by Newbs on Jul 5, 2006 9:48:07 GMT 7
EL don't worry about George. None of the rest of us do, so why should you be any different. It only took me 1 year, and completion of a PhD in Information Technology before I worked out how to use the quote button. Ruth's a faster learner than me, but.
I was going to invite you to Hoganland for a
beer (English)
pijiu (Chinese)
drop of piss (Hogan speak)
but seeing as you have a bit of an aversion to wildlife I'll might just leave you to handle the wildlife of China. ie. Bank of China staff, FAOs, taxi drivers and people who inhabit this strange saloon down Suzhou way.
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Post by Missi on Jul 5, 2006 11:51:05 GMT 7
 I have to agree that the people at the banks are vermin. I tried to send money to Johnny, (the book dude), he told them his name. They got it wrong. Went to change it back. I attempted to explain that the name was wrong and I needed to fix it. She had no clue what I was saying. And I was speaking in Chinese. I had the proper characters on my phone tried again and handed her my phone. She still didn't understand. At this point I just wanted to fall on my head. So I called up a friend to explain it to her, and no my friend was not a foreigner. The bank woman still didn't understand that I just wanted to change the name on the paper. After about 15 minutes of trying to be patient, and all the people laughing, a Chinese guy beside me said what I wanted in Chinese. I said thank you to him, and he didn't speak English. Then the bank woman tried to steal my phone.
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woza17
SuperDuperBarfly!
Posts: 2,203
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Post by woza17 on Jul 5, 2006 13:50:26 GMT 7
Has anyone noticed those great little quotes at the bottom of loonies posts. I really like them.
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Post by cheekygal on Jul 5, 2006 19:35:03 GMT 7
When I was teaching my *crazy* teenagers' class, we had a subject on poisonous snakes and insects. They all said that in China it happens really rare to find one. Perhaps in some really really wild places, which basically do not exist anymore. I think people have eaten all the snakes here long ago  That's why those snake baijus and snake dishes are so pricy |
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Post by Lotus Eater on Jul 5, 2006 21:42:18 GMT 7
Sadly the most venomous vermin you are likely to encounter will be other laowai (members of this here forum excluded). They will attempt to corrupt your pure soul, teach you how to drink and frequent the 'pink hairdressers', want you to join in their collective name-calling of hosts and FAO's and Admin people, want you to complain like hell about the differences between here and whatever bit of the earth they call 'home' and in general attempt to spoil your time here.
AVOID AT ALL COSTS!!
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Post by Raoul Duke on Jul 5, 2006 22:27:26 GMT 7
Newbs said it first. When George gets like that he's really just saying "Bitch-slap me! Please!" There are reports of the occasional cobra (and tiger) ranging as far up as the Suzhou area (true, although I can't imagine how they could ever get this far without being turned into dinner/aphrodesiacs/really hideous pointy shoes...). So talk nice about us.  |
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Escaped Lunatic
Barfly
Civet Burger? Sounds tempting. Can I get fries with that?
Posts: 567
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Post by Escaped Lunatic on Jul 6, 2006 0:35:50 GMT 7
(Gonna use quick reply just to see if George gets annoyed)
>I was going to invite you to Hoganland for a
beer (English)
pijiu (Chinese)
drop of piss (Hogan speak)
but seeing as you have a bit of an aversion to wildlife
I'll go out on a limb here and guess that Hoganland is somewhere in the Australia/New Zealand/Tasmania area.
No aversion to wildlife at all. I just have a bad habit of encountering the more venomous varieties (no, I don't go looking for them - they come looking for me). So far, no one with me has ever gotten tagged by anything worse than a wasp. If something serious is going to bite, I'm always the one with the puncture marks.
>There are reports of the occasional cobra (and tiger) ranging as far up as the Suzhou area
I once encountered a Florida Panther in my backyard (no, not a little bobcat. Fairly closely related to a mountain lion). I tried for a closer look and it just walked off into the swamp.
"Ask her to wait a moment - I am almost done."
- Carl Friedrich Gauss, while working, when informed that his wife is dying
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Post by hankuh on Jul 6, 2006 0:44:56 GMT 7
;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D Laughing so hard that my fingers are shaking to the point I can't even reach the keyboard! (which is probably a good thing ) |
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Post by George61 on Jul 6, 2006 1:57:34 GMT 7
Deep sigh!! Some people are just plain uneducateable!!
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Post by Mr Nobody on Jul 6, 2006 9:07:23 GMT 7
Yes. And it's our job, too.
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Post by Dragonsaver on Jul 6, 2006 10:24:00 GMT 7
;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D Laughing so hard that my fingers are shaking to the point I can't even reach the keyboard! (which is probably a good thing ) I agree whole heartedly  |
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Escaped Lunatic
Barfly
Civet Burger? Sounds tempting. Can I get fries with that?
Posts: 567
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Post by Escaped Lunatic on Jul 6, 2006 20:07:43 GMT 7
Nah, just pigheaded!  "Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." - H. G. Wells |
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