ferreter wrote:
 
> You wrote:
> When I waa collecting on Okinawa, I was frequently asked to pick up
> some
> rather large Conus geographus (10 cm+) .  My metod (bare handed) was
> to
> grasp the shell at the base and watch it very carefully as you
> transfer it
> to a bucket (not a sock).  If the critter even started to emerge, I
> would
> drop it and the shock would cause the animal to retreat immediately,
>
> May I just add this:
> "The only fatal case of which definite information is available is the
>
> following, reported by Professor Cleland in the Sixth Report of the
> Microbiological Laboratory (New South Wales Government Bureau of
> Microbiology) for the year 1915. Professor Cleland quotes the
> following
> Reverend W. Wyatt Gill. On the island of Mare (southernmost of the
> Loyalty
> Group, immediately to the east of New Caledonia), in the doubtful
> light, a
> native "unhappily took a good-sized shellfish (Conus textile) and put
> it in
> his basket. He immediately felt a painful sensation running up his
> right
> arm to the shoulder. He went home. The pain increased until he writhed
> in
> agony The body swelled to an enormous size, and by daylight he was a
> corpse."
>
> NEED I SAY MORE    MJB
 
  There also was a documented case which was carried in the Guam Dayly
news concerning a cast net fisherman who picked up a Conus geographus,
and stuck it in his pants pocket and later put his hand in his pocket
and was stung.  He ignored it until he started going blind andhe was
carried to the Hospital and died in the hospital shortly there after.
This occured in the late sixties shortly after we left Guam.  But a
friend sent me the clipping from the newspaper.
 
HET