043010 Things that want to kill me...and things that go BOOM in the middle of the night.

043010 Things that want to kill me...and things that go BOOM in the
middle of the night.

The weather now in Iraq is great. It's just barely hot during the
heat of the day and pleasantly cool at night and just right all other
times. It's also the time that snakes start moving around to find
that hunting ground for the summer. In all my time in Iraq I've not
seen any live snakes. I've seen a few dead ones that have been caught
and my reaction to seeing one of the worlds most deadliest snakes was
"that's it!?" Honestly the thing was barely 12 inches if that and
barely thicker than my pinky finger! So every week were told to be
careful of snakes.
Above are a few pics but what really should be noted is the comment
that "the biggest risk comes from soldiers turning to serpents for
entertainment...the cause of 85% of snakebits during Desert Storm".
LOL just soldiers? Ever seen a camel spider and a scorpion tossed in
a bucket to go at it? (hint - always bet on the camel spider!)
And the last few days it's been pretty dusty here at night and when
it's dusty, 'Akbar' out there just can't help but toss a few incoming
onto base. And so it happened last night. Around 9 PM, I'm watching
'Kindom of Heaven' and BOOM, the damn hooch shakes and I think "dang
that was close". So the alarms go off saying take cover, blah blah
blah but I'm not going to put on pants just to go out to a dusty, hot
bunker. I go back to the show. After the alarms stop, I did what a
few dozen other people did and finally put on some pants to go see
what got hit. I didn't have to walk far (as it was only a few hundred
yards away) and there are lights flashing on about a dozen emergency
vehicles. I can't get too close and asking 'what happened' is just
poor form. I don't seen any obvious damage and the self-service
laundry building is still standing so I go back to the hooch to bed.
A few years ago a round landing that close would give me reason to
pause. Now I just don't care. It's not a big deal.
R/Chris