Are you ready to switch off your screens and ponder or discuss another writing/conversation prompt from my friend Tyrean Martinson’s book? Here’s my take on it.
Scorpions belong to the kind of creatures I’d rather encounter with a thick wall of glass in between the two of us. That’s actually the only kind of meeting with any I have ever had. To be honest, they scare me. They belong to the arachnids, but they are an order of themselves and only distant relatives of spiders. They live mostly in deserts and are night-active predators. So, I’d have to BE in a desert in order to step on one. I rarely travel to any desert, though. Maybe some of you know whether there are any in Eastern Washington? I know that there are rattlesnakes out there – another species I rather not find anywhere near me.
I can only imagine how badly it might hurt if one stepped on a scorpion. As loath as I’m of meeting poisonous animals, I understand that they wouldn’t find it amusing either if I stepped on them. Probably crushed to death by my weight, a sting would be their last deed in life. Fair enough.
What I DO know, though, is how badly it hurts when you are stung into your foot by a bee or a wasp. Thankfully, I’m not allergic to these insects – there could be some bad outcome. But I remember that when I was about 16, I was walking from a bus station through clover fields to get to a hospital in a different town. My singing teacher had given birth to a baby girl, and I wanted to visit them both. (German mothers used to stay in hospital for an entire week after birthing in order to rest up, heal, and get used to the change in life.)
So, here I was walking. It was mid-summer. I wore sandals, and before I realized what had happened there was a fierce, fiery poke into the instep of my foot. I can’t remember whether it was a wasp or a bee that had gotten caught between one of the straps and my foot.
I was barely able to continue walking but was lucky that there was an open-air swimming pool pretty close to the clinic. It was the one and only time I ever went to the Red Cross medics there and asked them for help. They had this wonderfully cooling ointment called Soventol, and the pain ceased almost immediately. So, I got away with a lesson to watch out for stinging insects when walking, especially in open shoes. The lesson for the insect that had stung me was most probably deadly. And the medics had at least one minor case on their hands that day, meaning that they hadn’t been sitting in their little room in vain.
These days, I’m always happy when I see bees or bumble bees in our garden. We have planted a lot of flowers that come out at different times of the year, so the little critters will find something to eat. I watch them with caution, though.
I know scorpions must have their use in this world, too. But I’d not be happy to find any in my garden. Now I know why I’m grateful for our wetter climate in the South Sound.
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