What looked like a pimple or bug bite on Jessica and Garrett Gee’s toddler head during a trip to Botswana turned out to be far more invasive.
“WARNING: This video includes maggots and is NOT for the faint of heart,” wrote The Bucket List Family mom Jessica, in an Instagram post showing a video of her husband slowly pulling a fly larva out of their 5-year-old son Cali’s head.
“This incident actually happened while we were in Botswana last summer, but we only shared it on our Bucket List Friends: THINGS GONE WRONG IN AFRICA video,” she continued.
The Bucket List family – Garrett, Jessica and their three children Dorothy, Manilla and Cali – spend as much free time as possible traveling to foreign countries. During one of their adventures, things went a little wrong.
“Cali complained of pain on the top of his head, but it just looked like a small red bump,” Jessica wrote. “The next day it had a white top like a pimple, but after we showed it to our guides and the local doctor, no one knew what it could be. I randomly sent a photo of it to my girlfriend at home and her husband recognized that it was a boy’s fly! FLYING BOT!!!?!?!”
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The video shows Garrett using tweezers to slowly pull out the grub, which at first looks like a white pimple about to pop, but then reveals itself as a small maggot-like worm.
“A bot fly bit Cali on the head and laid its egg inside his skin. The egg then hatched and the larva continued to live inside his head and would be there for about 20 more days until it was ready to crawl out and fly off on its own!!” Jessica continued.
“It was late at night when my girlfriend informed me that it might be a fly so I woke Garrett up with tweezers in my hand and said ‘you’re not going to believe this. I think the pimple is alive and we need to operate on it,'” she continued. “Those who know Garrett know that he hates such horrible things, but he went into total Papa Bear mode and pulled it off with a steady hand! We didn’t know what to expect so you can imagine our shock and horror when that long worm started pulling out!!”
In the video, their son can be seen crying as Garrett gently removes the larva, before soothing Cali and then giving his wife a shocked, clearly uncomfortable look.
“That look on Garrett’s face at the end says it all!” Jessica wrote. “Cali immediately felt better and went back to sleep, and the very next morning he was bragging to his big brother about the ‘head monster’ that Dad pulled out of his skin. MORAL OF THE STORY: Journeys aren’t always rainbows and butterflies. Sometimes it’s tweezers and robotic flies .”
The Gee family.
TheBucketListFamily/Instagram
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The Gees, who call Hawaii their home base, said they have experienced other accidents during their travels.
“We had three accidents that required stitches — in Thailand and Nepal and at Male Airport in the Maldives,” Garrett told Drew and Jonathan Scott during an interview in 2020. “Having travel insurance that includes health insurance is key. It’s nothing more complicated than running into an accident or incident at home.”
This did not slow them down, although during the interview they noted that their children now had a consistent school schedule.
As Jessica explained, “We hope that through travel, our children will gain a love for our country and wildlife. We hope that they are open-minded and open-hearted to people from other cultures. We hope that they will gain a love for trying new things.”
“But most of all, we hope they know we love them and appreciate this time we have to experience the world together,” she added.
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Source: HIS Education