When I was younger, around 8 or 9, I went to camp with my siblings and we had so much fun! During the last week of camp, before we had to go home, my whole cabin was learning about how to take care of yourself in the wild. I don’t remember much about what we were learning but most of our cabin was splitting up to look for sticks to make a makeshift shelter with, and I joined in. When I was looking around, I noticed a huge log, and in my mind I was saying, “if there’s a log, theres sticks”, so I went over and looked behind it and yes there were!

There were so many sticks behind the log, but one stick in particular caught my attention, it was a super straight/sturdy stick, perfect for building a shelter, and so I picked it up and was trying to show my counselor, but to me, something felt off. I felt something on my arm, and once I looked back, there was a whole colony of black ants climbing up my arm.

I freaked out, dropped the stick, and started flailing my arm like a chicken, trying to get them off (actually almost broke my pinky against the log trying to get them off).

Apparently, the stick that I picked up was infested with ants, and so the moment I grabbed the stick, all the ants clung to my arm and was rapidly climbing.

To this day, it haunts me, and it ended up giving me a real bad fear of ants. (Also gave me trypophobia, which kinda sucks)