It looked like a piece of fluff on the floor. In the evening the light was dim, I didn’t have my glasses on and I picked it up.
A piercing pain jolted my right thumb. I shrieked. The “fluff” was a scorpion, and it had stung me.
Scorpions blend in with those bland light stone-colored carpets that cover bedroom floors, including mine. That’s one reason I am getting rid of my wall-to-wall altogether, but that is a story for another day.
The stinging pain, my friends, went on and on. I wrapped my injured digit in a bag of ice. The pharmacy said to call Poison Control and Poison Control said not to use ice. I hung up. My thumb was throbbing too much to hold the phone.
The stinging pain, my friends, went on and on. I wrapped my injured digit in a bag of ice. The pharmacy said to call Poison Control and Poison Control said not to use ice. I hung up. My thumb was throbbing too much to hold the phone.
Two weeks later, after a grand finale of spurting pain that had advanced to, of all places, my jaw, the toxin was done in its effort to kill me.
I called the exterminator. Several times he came, because several times these lethal creatures came back. They are endemic to hot places like Arizona. I am, after all, invading their territory. They came first.
My sister-in-law Diane, whom I love dearly, refuses to kill any creature, including insects. She shoos them outside, and
