- Expect the unexpected.
- Mosquitoes - the most mosquitoes I've ever seen.
- Floating down a river
getting leeches tweezed off of you is not fun.
(spooky music)
- It starts on a pool day, it was a Friday,
I remember like it was yesterday.
And I remember thinking
"This day went so smoothly,
like this is just wow,
this Friday is gonna start my weekend off good."
The day was ending,
the lifeguards were blowing the whistle
for everybody to get out
and we're lining up and we're doing role.
I was counting, making sure we had all the kids,
and we're about to get on the bus and go back to camp.
When one of my younger campers taps on my arm and he's like,
"I need to go to the bathroom."
Okay, let's go.
I grab his hand, we're scurrying over to the bathroom,
and he suddenly slows down and he stops and he's like,
"I don't have to go to the bathroom anymore."
And I was like, "Did you have an accident?"
And he was like, "Yeah."
And I was like, "Okay."
Look down, he didn't wet his pants.
So I was like,
"Okay, we have a big problem we have to deal with here."
We panic, or I panic.
So I was like,
"Okay, I guess go into the bathroom,
"close the door, take off your pants.
"We're gonna throw away your underwear,
"we'll talk with your parents about this later,
"it'll be all good."
And he's like, "Okay."
So he goes into the bathroom and I hear this noise
(splat noise)
and this poop falls on to the ground.
And when I tell you it doesn't mathematically make sense
the size of this poop and the size of this kid.
I was like,
"Did your parents feed you a buffet the last three days
"and it's just been in there
"and it just all came out right now?"
He like puts his pants back on
and he opens the door and I'm like -
We can't just leave,
because there is like an adult sized poop on the ground.
And I'm gonna be the last one seen walking out of here
and they are for sure gonna think it's me.
Of course this is in a pool bathroom,
and there's no paper towels, there's no hand dryers.
And so I'm like, okay, toilet seat covers.
Grab the toilet seat covers.
Grab like a thick stack.
I'm gonna grab his underwear.
And I pile those together and I grab the poop
and I just throw it in the trash.
And I'm like "Done."
And he looks at me and he's like,
"Don't tell anybody about this."
I'm like, "Trust me, Dude,
"I don't even know how to form the words
to tell anybody about this."
His dad shows up and I'm like,
"Hey Dude, we had a situation with your son."
And I tell him what happened.
And he says, "Oh, yeah, that's been happening recently."
And I'm like -
Expect the unexpected.
With kids, you never know what's gonna happen
and just be ready.
(dramatic music)
- [Michael] Our camp is split into different units.
We would go on three to four day camping trips,
where it would be like
rock climbing, canoeing, biking, hiking.
On one of the camping trips that I mentioned,
I was on a canoeing trip.
I was in the back -
it was me and this other counselor -
with our partners who were campers.
We were canoeing and the current was really strong.
We were getting pushed towards the edge of the river,
right into where this tree had fallen down.
I didn't really think anything of it.
I was like, "But when we get over there
"we'll turn and we'll be good."
The closer and closer we got
the canoe who was in front of us waited 'til the last minute
to get out of the way of the tree.
So my partner and I had no time to turn
and get out of the way.
So we kinda went just straight under the tree.
So here we are in our canoe, in branches basically.
The canoe with the other counselor behind us
comes the exact same way that we did.
But, we weren't able to move out of the way
'cause we were stuck in the branches, so we collided.
Now instead of us colliding where we were just bumped,
and the current was so strong
that their canoe came, hit ours and then went under us.
And thank God that we were wearing life jackets,
but the counselor and the camper
both came up out of the water, like 2 to 3 seconds after.
And the counselor turns to me and goes,
"Michael you need to get out of your canoe,
"something's wrong with my foot."
So I jump out of my canoe,
and I can't hold on to my canoe and the branch
'cause the current's so strong.
So I look to my partner, who is a camper, and I was like,
"Are you okay with floating down the river by yourself?"
She was like, "Yes, I'm totally fine."
And she's floating away and I'm like
"Make sure you get some help!"
Then I pull my focus to my other counselor's foot.
The canoe was getting pushed by the current
into the counselor's ankle basically.
And then his ankle was being pushed into the branch,
so he was stuck.
Went underwater, felt around and I tried to push,
and every time I did,
the counselor would cry in pain or wince.
He was able to kind of wiggle his foot out
while I pulled the branch away.
In my head I'm thinking,
"Oh the other counselors know what's going on,
they called someone to come help us."
So we were sitting there on the branch,
for like 30-45 minutes.
Not only did the canoe sink,
the tree that were on also started sinking.
I grab on to one of the branches,
the camper is grabbing onto my life jacket,
and then my other counselor
is grabbing onto her life jacket.
We one by one kind of float.
We see this patch of open sand kind of through this shrub.
We climb through these thorny bushes
as if it couldn't get any worse.
Mosquitoes - the most mosquitoes I've ever seen.
And my other counselor decided to go a little bit
into the forest to see if he could see anything.
He comes back with so many mosquito bites on his face.
I was like "We can't stay here any longer.
"Let's just try to float down the river,
"see if we find anyone that we know."
All of us are linked arms and we get back into the water
and float down the river for maybe three minutes
before we see two heads coming this way.
And it was two of the other counselors rowing upstream.
We finally catch up to them.
We kind of console the camper,
because it was kind of a traumatic experience.
And then with the other counselor's phone we call camp.
And the counselor and I both started talking to them
and we both started crying
because we had no time to process
what had just happened to us.
Looking back on it, I think of how lucky we were
that no one got stuck under water.
We were all wearing life jackets.
It's kind of the scariest
and most dangerous situation I've ever been in.
But now it's kind of like "Well look what I did.
"I'm so strong and brave."
(ominous music)
- [Naomi] One summer I was a camp counselor.
I went on a float tubing trip
down the river with my campers.
And this is just where you sit in an inflatable tube,
float down the river, have a really great time.
It was supposed to be really relaxing and enjoyable,
and for the most part it was.
But about halfway through,
I was in the back of the herd
with some co-staff of mine who are my really close friends.
And I went to scratch my back
and I looked at my hand afterwards
and there was a baby leech on it.
So I kind of started to freak out
and I touched my back again
and there were even more baby leeches.
I then started crying.
And I flipped over onto my stomach
and my friends started gasping and I was like,
"You need to tell me what is going on right now."
And they were like,
"You have baby leeches and some adult ones
"all over your back."
And so, I'm bawling.
And thankfully we had a couple lifeguards with us
that were in kayaks.
So I call over a lifeguard
and thankfully he had tweezers in his first aid kit.
So he pulled those out
and I attached my tube to my friend's tube,
and she starts tweezing the leeches off of me.
I was crying sitting there, and then I think
"Oh, so the leeches that are on me
are on the part of my back that was underwater.
Does that mean that my butt also has leeches on them?"
And then I started crying even more.
Because, I touched my butt,
and sure enough there were baby leeches.
So while I'm floating down the river,
surrounded by campers and all my co-staff,
I have to take off my bathing suit bottoms
to get those leeches off.
And my camper is holding my hand while I'm sobbing.
We went on floating down the river, I'm getting tweezed
and finally my friends don't think they can see any more.
I hang on to the kayak that one of the lifeguards is in
and she brings me to shore.
And I get out and my supervisor's there and I was like,
"I need to see a doctor, now.
"I think I have leeches up my butt."
And she was like, "Excuse me?"
I was like "I have leeches maybe inside of me."
And then I start crying again.
And so I put on some normal clothes,
got in the car and I went back to camp to see a doctor.
I get there and somehow
everyone at camp has heard about the situation
and I hadn't told anyone.
So everyone's coming up to me being like,
"Oh, I heard you had 45 leeches on you?"
"What do you mean 45 leeches, I didn't have that many."
And they're like, "Oh, that's just what I heard."
And I come to find out later
when I got back to the campsite
where all my campers and co-staff were staying
that sure enough, there were 45 leeches on me
and I was just in so much of a panic that I had no idea.
I finally get to see the doctor
and the cherry on top was that I come to find out
that the doctor is my camper's dad.
He was so nice, so helpful.
He told me that he had done some research
and that I had probably floated through
a nest of baby leeches.
It should be fine, they're not harmful.
So that was really reassuring
and he told me to take a really good shower,
check the toilet after you go to the bathroom,
and everything was fine and it turned out okay.
But in that moment it was terrifying
and I never experienced
something like that before in my life.
Floating down a river
getting leeches tweezed off of you is not fun.
(spooky music)