I GOT STUNG....

by a portuguese man of war.
which one of these do you think it was?
well if you used deductive reasoning and knowing that i am in hawaii and not i
n portugal you would guess the blue bubble above. i have lived in hawaii for about 3 years now and have always wondered what it felt like to be stung by one of this seemingly insignificant little guys- well my experience yesterday ended all my wondering.juano and i come to this beach often to go boogie boarding. we had just gotten tired of playing in the waves with the boards and started to play in the sand when the attack of the portuguese man of war occured. we thought we were really clever to make a little pool out of sand in which the water would spill into when the waves climbed up the beach. our little pool turned into a blue bubble trap. after one of the waves had subsided i felt something on the side of my leg between the two of us and thinking it was a stick or piece of ocean i started to grab for it. that is when i felt the sting. on my leg and my fingers. juano luckily didn't get stung because his shorts were protecting him. i wasn't so lucky. it hurt so bad!! a guy walking by noticed me writhing in pain and by the look on his face i could tell he had some experience with the little buggers. he said that it would be really painful for 20 minutes. well in my case it was over an hour. but i recovered. the sting didn't completely wear off for about 6 hours. i was surprised that such a little thing could could do that. reading up on it we discovered that you could even die from them...probably 1 in 100 million though- but still!!
just a day at the beach... (mountains anyone?)