30.04.04 - 18:38

number three for today...

it is the beginning of the hot season. the ground is baked a fierce red by the sun. it is not surprising, in the swirling miasmic dustwinds, that the scorpions have crawled up through the ground, out from the bowels of Hell.

as long as my index finger, they prance confidently across the nocturnal sands, wagging their venomous tails daintily. as my grandpa N might observe, "look at the swing on that back porch!"

in the daylight, they are furtive, scurrying across the mud floors of my house, almost just a flash of color. but they run on the floors - not the walls, like lizards. and they do not run haphazardly like mice. so i know. scorpion on the premises.

there was the hunt for the grayish sand-colored one i saw in my living room. there was the cheerfully strolling one chez annika. there was the other black one, sharing my path home.

the black ones are supposed to be more venomous. more dangerous, i suppose, although the peace corps handbook promises that scorpions are only fatal for very small children. "pop a benadryl!" it advises. possible effects of sting: intense pain at site, swelling, tingling or numbness of extremity, nausea, increased heart rate.

and yet, these pocket monsters are so easily subdued by a mere flip-flop! there is barely even a crispety-crunchety as their exoskeletons are broken - just a little pile of goo to proclaim injury and ensuing death. a venomous sting, two nasty looking pincers... but if one so much as shows a scorpion a Nine West catalogue, it keels over dead.

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