Sometimes walking alone in the middle of the night through a jungle trying to find some rare stick insect can get rather scary. At times even outright dangerous.

During one of those nights, about three years ago, in the dense jungles in the Burmese Himalayas near the border of India and China, I fell victim to one of the most vicious plants that pry their ugly roots through the jungle's soft topsoil.
The Hairy, Grabbing Fern, as that monster is called, lives high on the slopes of the Burmese Himalayas and has, as legend has it, trapped and killed many unsuspecting jungle revelers.
Although I am a veteran of many jungle hikes, I wasn't aware of its existence or I wouldn't have gone to where I did.

It was late at night. Everything was pitch black except for the small cone of light of my flashlight. I had just found a beautiful, large, female stick insect when I felt something cold and hairy brushing my leg just above the boot.
Being alone in the jungle in the middle of the night can put you on the edge and I must have literally jumped about ten feet high into the air in panic.
Coming down I fell to the ground and was unable to move with fear. My flash light had fallen somewhere in the bushes and gone out upon impact.
Slowly I tried to compose myself.
Just about the time when my heart started beating again, my left arm was grabbed and almost crushed in a clamp-like vice.
I screamed like a madman and tried to pull my arm out from the cold, hairy grip but to no avail.
Then something that felt like a huge, hairy boa constrictor wrapped itself around my left leg. Almost simultaneously my right arm was squeezed so hard that I couldn't even move my fingers. I shrieked and squirmed in horror. More and more of those hairy, snaky things grabbed me and enclosed themselves like tentacles around my limbs. It felt like I would be torn apart, quartered like a Roman slave. No telling how long I was yelling and fighting before I lost consciousness because of the terrible pain.

I woke up, the sun shining in my face and I realized that I was laying on a bed of leaves in the middle of a small clearing. Muffled voices in the background aroused my curiosity and I tried to sit up, supporting myself on my elbow.
A spark of pain jolted my body and I let out a small grunt.
My whole body was extremely painful.
I lifted my arm to look at it. There was not an inch of white skin on it.
My whole arm and most parts of my body were dark green and blue with bruises.
My grunt alerted a couple of guys whom I didn't notice before and they came over to sit next to me.
They appeared to be mountain tribesmen, the kind you would find in Burma, Thailand, Laos or Southern China.
At least they were wearing tribal costumes.
My Burmese is pretty non-existent and they spoke no English. We could only communicate with sign language and even then we had problems because of the excruciating pain every movement caused me.

I recovered astonishingly fast and after two days I could almost walk again. It must have been the foul smelling stew those guys were feeding me. I suspect it contained opium because I got real high after every meal and the pain just disappeared.
It turned out there were four of them and they indicated that they came from China.
After a while we were getting pretty good at communicating with each other.
They would hunt small deer and shared their roasted meat with me. Of course I was curious as to what had happened to me but as much as they tried, I couldn't understand what they were talking about when they tried to explain.
Then, when I was able to walk again, they brought me into the jungle and showed me the monster who did this to me.
Apparently during that awful night they were camping nearby when they heard my screams. Rushing over they found me entangled in the hairy grip of that despicable vegetable. Being locals they immediately knew what to do. That ugly fern can't handle urine. My saviors started peeing all over the octopus-like tentacles till the plant quickly retracted.
It kinda pissed off.
It also explained the bad smell of my clothes.
They then carried me to their camp and cared for my bruises. Boy that hairy, grabbing fern is an ugly fucker. I took the opportunity to take a picture which you can see in this page. Jokingly I suggested to them that I would like to make a picture of them in front of the plant but they refused. They wouldn't go near that vicious man-eater (even my picture was taken with a tele lens from a safe distance). Later on, back at the camp, they still wouldn't let me take a picture of them. They probably had their reasons and I didn't push any further.

After three days they indicated to me that they will have to move on. Only then did I understand why they didn't like their pictures taken.
Once they were ready to go on their way they dragged wooden backpacks from the bushes. Each had two big round stones tied to it. Those gentlemen were jade smugglers. Well because of them I lived to tell the story and I thanked them for it by indicating that if I ever find a new species of stick insects I will name it after them.
That's the least I could do.
They seemed to be very excited about the prospect.