The six-legged creature creeps down the canopy, extends its slender trunk, and pierces the ground.
Up comes blood.
This is no regular forest.
Living where the scalp meets the hair, these nightmarish figures are, in fact, sesame seed-sized insects, otherwise known as head lice.
The earliest archaeological evidence of humans' close-knit relationship with lice is a fully preserved egg, discovered in the hair of a 10,000-year-old Brazilian mummy.
And it seems that for as long as we've had lice, we've fought hard to get rid of them.
Nit combs, the fine-tooth brushes used to remove lice and their sticky eggs have been found among the ancient remains of cultures across the globe.
This battle continues today, as it's estimated we spend billions of dollars each year treating infestations.
So, why are lice so difficult to get rid of?
There are at least several thousand louse species, as nearly all mammals deal with these parasites.
