On the last day in Florida we headed to Pompano Beach.
It's a very family oriented beach, not hoity toity like Miami beach but a very nice spot with a lot of families hanging out and having a nice day at the beach. We rented a sun umbrella and spent the day there swimming, snacking, and doing some beach volleyball, and then more swimming and jumping in the waves.
While on our second time swimming Abby suddenly went "Oww!, what is that!?"!
She had something on the back of her leg that she immediately reached out and moved away with her hand, and her hand promptly began to hurt as well, and the ouchies grew more vociferous.
Yep, she had been stung.
Stingers still in place and stuck to her leg and hand, I got her out of the water and figuring that it was a jellyfish type sting and remembering my Scuba diver marine life training, as well as observing the sting travel from leg to hand quickly decided trying to get it off with bare hands would be a bad idea.
So I grabbed a towel and gently removed both tentacle pieces with their nematocysts from her hand and leg.
Her leg and hand had already started turning very red and it was quite painful.
The life guard nearby had heard her exclamations of pain and came over to see what was going on. Turns out it was a Portugese Man O' War.
He complimented me for having the sense not to try and remove the stings barehanded. Apparently he deals with lots of multiple persons stung from the same tentacle as people try and remove them barehanded.
He had a nice freeing spray that made the pain subside.
Almost immediately after, a fair bit farther down the beach, a large Man O War was found washed up on the beach and the lifeguard marked the location off so people wouldn't step on it. It might have been the one that got her, if so to heck with it.
Man O War stings are definitely no joke.
And of course to demonstrate how they are no joke, an Australian man deliberately stung himself with predictable results for your viewing pleasure, because, Australia Man:
That was a small one, imagine a larger one getting you, and the one that got Abby assuming it was the same one was larger than that with a float about the size of a tennis ball with long tentacles.
The pain from the sting went away after about 12 hours and icing it helped.
Certainly an interesting last day, but still a great day at the beach and we all got sunburns to prove it, and Abby got a close encounter with marine life.
