Dad Pulls Botfly Larva from 5-Year-Old Son's Head During Trip to Botswana: 'Not for the Faint of Heart'

What looked like a pimple or an insect bite on Jessica and Garrett Gee's toddler's head during a trip to Botswana turned out to be far more invasive.

"WARNING this video includes worms and is NOT for the faint of heart," wrote The Bucket List Family mom Jessica, in an Instagram post showing the video of her husband slowly pulling a botfly larva from the head of their 5-year-old son Cali.

"This incident actually happened while we were in Botswana this past Summer but we only shared it on our Bucket List Friends video : THINGS GONE WRONG IN AFRICA," she continued.

The Bucket List Family — Garrett, Jessica and their three kids Dorothy, Manilla and Cali — spend as much of their free time as possible traveling to foreign countries. It was during one of their adventures that things went a little buggy.

"Cali had been complaining of a pain on the top of his head but it just looked like a little red bump," Jessica wrote. "The next day it had a white tip like a pimple but after showing our guides and a local medic nobody knew what it could be. Randomly, I texted a photo of it to my girlfriend back home and her husband recognized it as a boy fly! A BOT FLY!!?!?!!"

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The video shows Garrett using a pair of tweezers to slowly extract the larva, which looks like a whitehead pimple about to pop at first but then reveals itself to be a small, maggot-like worm.

"A bot fly bit Cali on the head and laid its egg inside his skin. The egg then hatched and the larva continued to live in his head and would have been there for ~20 more days until it was ready to crawl out and fly away on its own!!" Jessica continued.

"It was late into the night when my girlfriend notified me it may be a bot fly so I woke up Garrett and with tweezers in hand said 'you’re not going to believe this. I think the pimple is alive and we need to operate,' " she continued. "Those who know Garrett know he hates gross stuff like this but he went total Papa Bear mode and with steady hands, got it out! We didn’t know what to expect so you can imagine our shock and terror as that long worm began to pull out!!"

The video shows their son crying as Garrett gently extracts the larva, before soothing Cali and then giving his wife a shocked, clearly uncomfortable look.

"That look on Garrett’s face at the end says it all!" Jessica wrote. "Cali immediately felt better and fell back asleep, and as soon as the next morning he was bragging to his big brother about the 'head monster' that dad pulled out of his skin. MORAL OF THE STORY : Traveling isn’t always rainbows and butterflies. Sometimes it’s tweezers and bot flies."

The Gees, who call Hawaii their home base, have said that they've experienced other misadventures during their travels.

"We had three accidents that led to stitches — in Thailand and Nepal, and at the Male airport in the Maldives," Garrett told Drew and Jonathan Scott during an interview in 2020. "The key is to have travel insurance that includes medical coverage. It’s no more complicated than running into an accident or incident back at home."

That hasn't slowed them down, though they did note during the interview that they now have their kids on a consistent school schedule.

As Jessica explained, "Through travel, we hope our children gain a love for our earth and wildlife. We hope they are open-minded and open-hearted to people from other cultures. We hope they gain a love for trying new things."

"But, most of all, we hope they know that we love them and treasure this time we have to experience the world together," she added.