tonight was the night - it was pretty scary, especially in the beginning when the sentries launched the first wave of attack, they really do swarm over you, but i didn't get stung at least. Though the other two guys did. Plus one of them got some venom squirted into his eyes. He said that hurts more than the the sting. They didn't think the stings were too bad on the scale of things coz they had to penetrate through their protective clothing so they didn't get the full dose. Though the boss did say as he left that he could barely move his elbow so i suspect it was hurting a lot worse than he was making out. Tough guys. Not like me.
There were only two guys, so ended up being one of the workers pretty much. One thing i discovered was that apart from the dangerous and scary aspect, it's actually very hard work - exacerbated by the fact that you are wearing layers of protective clothing - we were all totally drenched in sweat by the end of it.
The next thing is to make sure i don't get stung in the next few days. There were quite a few that didn't get captured. i'd heard the next week was a dangerous period, but the boss said it would only be for a couple of days. Interestingly, when we came back up to the house with the catch, they said it was ok to turn the outside light on. About 5-6 followed us up and were flying around the light, but the boss said it was fine to take off our protective clothing, which we did coz, for one thing, we were all ready to expire from overheating, and they didn't attack us - they were still blaming the light apparently. However, when daylight comes it will be anything human. I'll check the video but i am not too hopeful as it's a night time operation and the night vision on my handycam is pretty crappy - i also missed the two most dramatic things - when the guy got squirted and when the tree branch that they climbed up and cut off and were planning to gently lower down with some attached ropes came suddenly crashing down above us in the dark - luckily no-one was directly under it.