A backpacker returned home from a long trip only to find out he had brought something with him, burrowed in his toe: a chigoe flea and hundreds of eggs.
Matthew O’Donnell, 22, volunteered in rural Tanzania over the summer and returned to his home in Britain in September.
Weeks after his return, O’Donnell was sitting on his bed when he felt a tingling sensation in his foot. Suddenly the black flea broke through his foot’s skin, landing on his bed, along with hundreds of tiny eggs, reports The Daily Mail.
O’Donnell had been warned about the chigoe, or locally referred to jigger flea, but did not know he had been carrying one in his foot.
“I looked down to see a lump and thought “What on earth is that?,” O’Donnell said. “A tiny black bug dropped out, followed by 100 little white eggs tumbling after it.”
O’Donnell had an idea of what it was when it popped out of his skin because one of his friend’s had gotten it in her toenail while with him in Tanzania.
“This type of tic lives in the sand over there, so if you’re walking around in flip flops it burrows into your skin,” O’Donnell said. “It seems this insect used me as a free ticket back from Tanzania only to pop out of my foot a month later.”
O’Donnell visited a doctor and was given the all clear, reports AOL Travel UK.
“It was pretty creepy. I’ve basically acted as a walking incubator for a month without knowing or giving my permission. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh at the situation or run into my kitchen hysterically shouting at 3am to cut my foot off with a carving knife,” O’Donnell added.
Photo Source: The Daily Mail
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