Squirting Cucumber

Today I had one of the most hilarious experiences of my trip so far, although I have had many! I was on a walk with my sister from their house to their town of Mourão. On the way we passed a curious plant growing by the side of the path and I bent down to look closer and took a photo so that I could look it up later to identify it. Then suddenly I jumped back with a yelp because the plant seemed to have spat at me! I felt this sticky liquid on my face and arms and dropped my phone in surprise! I exclaimed to my sister that something spat at me and wondered if it might’ve been a snake or something. We investigated and couldn’t see anything hiding in the plant, so concluded it must’ve been coming from the plant itself.
I was worried that it might have been poisonous, so Daveen suggested I wash it off with water from my water bottle. However it didn’t seem to have irritated my skin at all, though it was slightly sticky. Later on, we looked it up on an app I had on my phone called iNaturalist and found out that it was a Squirting Cucumber (Ecballium elaterium) which when ripe, squirts a stream of mucilaginous liquid containing its seeds. Maybe the plant “saw” my shadow and took the opportunity to send its seeds out for me to carry off to a new place for propagation elsewhere. I also discovered that both the liquid and the seeds are full of health benefits, so I didn’t wash it off straight away.
Isn’t Nature amazing!
After another delicious lunch at home and a siesta, we set off for a great wine tasting event, which I’m sure the others will blip about, so I’ll leave it to them.