To be buried alive.

I met a young First Nation Blackfoot girl and her boyfriend, and we got to talk about the Oldman River and local horror stories. So, I replied with our 4,500 tarantulas in a bedroom tale. Yet she came back with a better scary experience.

She was telling me about how her people deal with stress; she had undergone a stressful time at work. Her solution was to hike up into the Porcupine Hills and fast for three days and three nights with a companion.

On her second evening, being very tired and hungry, she lay down to sleep. She had a sleepless night constantly shifting and scratching to try and get comfortable. Finally, she woke to a faint humming sound and vibrations all over her back. To her horror, she found her clothes were covered with black beetles, as was her friend sleeping nearby, hundreds of them.

I asked her to describe these beetles, they were black with yellow bands running across their backs, and she replied. With that, I laughed and told her that her scary story was more horrific than she realized. The beetles she described were Saxon beetles, a burying beetle. These beetles were simply trying to bury her and lay eggs on her body as food for their offspring maggots. When dealing with a large ‘dead’ body these beetles make a humming sound to attract others to help in the burial, for there is plenty of food for all.

I believed that there was probably a large dead animal nearby that had attracted a large number of beetles to that area. Then they were presented with two more large bodies to deal with. A good job she woke up and brushed off the beetles from her clothes. Uck!