This has the making of a good thread! Let me add my favorite two narratives.

While completing my catalog of the Annulariidae I came across these two:

In Bartsch (1946: 39), Charles Orcutt noted of his trip to Haiti about
1929: "Along the southern Dominican border it is not safe for a lone
traveler; out of Fond Verettes I was attacked after dark and wounded in the
forehead with a stone. I bled like a stuck pig but did not loose
consciousness and rendered first aid; the Negroes nearby put a hut at my
disposal and kept a fire burning all night and I resumed my tramp alone the
next day to Bodarie." Now that's collecting!

And for those of you pondering the disposition of your collection on your
death or retirement... When Judge Edward Chitty, the famous Jamaican
collector and comrade of Adams, was pensioned back to England part of his
collection went to the British Museum and part stayed in Jamaica at the
Royal Society of Arts of Jamaica. When that Society folded the collection
was stored at the wharf of the Royal Mail Company, where it was left to
deteriorate. The transport of the collection from the Society to the wharf
"was made by a gang of men drafted from among the quieter patients of the
Lunatic Asylum at Rae Town" (Vendryes, 1899: 592).