Stumbling deeper into the jungle, the man soon discovered that nothing in his civilized upbringing had prepared him for basic survival. He soon found himself wishing he had eaten more of the fruit during the helicopter ride.
How far had they brought him into this foreboding jungle? It had been a long flight. They could have traveled 50 or 100 kilometers, for all he knew.
Making the situation worse was that the already gloomy understory of the jungle was growing darker as the sun slowly sank. Richard realized it would be dark soon. His stomach srumbled from hunger, no doubt exacerbated by a long trek through twisting vines, brush, ferns, and other vegetation. His find of some fallen fruit looked all the more fortunate. He reached to the jungle floor and picked up one of them and turned it around in his dirty hand. The fruit looked like a fig, but it bore some dents and dark bruises, probably from tumbling to the ground. He tried to clean it by brushing it against his hairy chest, only to grimace at the thought that his chest hair might be less sanitary than the ground. He took a bite. It wasn't his usual fare, but he didn't feel his mouth tingle as a warning sign. He took another bite, then happened to glance down.
There's only one thing worse than finding the proverbial worm in your apple. Richard had found that thing and stared at the neat cross-section of the worm or large grub left in the pulp of the fig. He retched and spit some of the pulp that he hadn't already swallowed from his mouth. "Fucking gross," he said and looked at the abundance of other figs on the ground with disgust. Not even his hunger could persuade him to pick up any more of the worm-ridden fruit.
He saw a large hollow that curved into the base of a nearby large tree. It looked snug, so he approached and crammed himself into the space. He wished he had matches, but even if he had them there was a lack of suitable dry wood or any other combustible materials. As the jungle sank into darkness, he squirmed to get more comfortable in the tree crevice. He had just started to get comfortable when the hundreds of ants, responding to the invasion of their nearby nest, launched their attack.
Richard's panicked screams tore through the darkness and startled nearby roosting birds into flight. He stayed busy slapping at the hundreds of biting, stinging ants for the next half hour. The educated product of a long string of elites finally curled on a sandy spot on the ground near the fallen figs and endured the longest, most uncomfortable night of his life. In his reluctantly acquired huge, burly body, he sniffled and cried himself to an eventual fitful sleep.