Reply #5: Story my father told me . . . [View All]

Way back in the long ago (1955), my family was stationed in Paraguay - dad was teaching Paraguayan Air Force pilots to fly. That year, everyone at the military mission had been invited out to General Strossener's ranch for his annual birthday bash weekend, which included a boar hunt. Several boars were bagged and their carcasses placed in large metal cans for the plane trip back to Asunción (they were flying DC-3s, I think). Upon arrival, the cans were removed from the plane and everyone went home.

A couple of weeks later, the wife of the American Ambassador notified the mission that she wanted to go to Lima to do some Christmas shopping. She arrived at the flightline and boarded the plane . . . off they went toward Peru. All was fine until they started their ascent over the Andes, which required crew and passengers to wear oxygen masks part of the way because the planes were not pressurised. The crew (my dad was not piloting this one) kept hearing odd muffled noises from the back and eventually the co-pilot went back to see what was going on.

Turns out the ambassador's wife was being eaten alive by fleas - but she thought she'd die on the spot if she took off her oxygen mask, so she was dancing around in her seat and scratching herself raw - and hollering into her mask.

Apparently, the fleas had escaped from the tin cans and survived for weeks inside the plane - just waiting for a tasty meal.

Bugs on planes.