From day one you hear of "The Jungle" on Mondays during Flight Training. (Yes... a shameless plug) from Chuck, Charlie or one of the other instructors.  Sometimes you hear it mentioned in conversations...  I have a time or two heard it from behind me while flying "Hey, you're pretty far out over the jungle."  We recently had a member lose a 6' red and beige delta plane on final approach. 3 weeks later he found it... yards away from the end of the runway... As for myself, when I was a little kid you'd hear about the "Cucuy" (Koo-Kueee) in Spanish... "If you don't eat your supper" or "if you don't  go to sleep"..."The Cucuy will come and get you..." Yes... we all had a "Boogieman" growing up... Now as a fifty something year old, he's back... He's just called "The Jungle" now. GREAT! I finally get into a hobby I am loving and it comes with a Cucuy.

You can see it off in the distance,,, trees and shrubs maybe 10-15 feet high. Not much consequence or very menacing from the airfield's point of view. Until that day when it's YOUR turn to be the one to go on a quest. You go down a dirt road that goes along the perimeter of the field. Easy Cheezy, no problem... Then you start down into the jungle.. and you trudge and shove and step over and under vines and branches and shrubs and slide and trip and brush against some weeds who's sole purpose seems to be  just to grow sharp spikes for no danged reason... (FYI... you're an UGLY plant... nobody is going to steal you... you don't need all that protection)... ...then you realize you've only gone 5 feet... Looking up at the 10-15 foot trees you realize you are just seeing the tops of 50-80 foot trees.

I did find a plane..  kind of. At least the most intact one of several carcasses I found. I still don't know how I saw it... I happened to look up and the 'red' color caught my eye.. of course... it had to be towards the TOP of a tree. 40-50 feet away... straight up. It was destined to live out it's days as a Christmas Ornament. For those of you old enough to remember the original black & white version of "The Fly" and can still hear in your heads "Help me.... Helllllp meeeeee"... that's what I heard from that poor plane.