Scorpion Encounters

Deepa jumped back with a fearful look on her face and I had my little laugh like a naughty school boy scaring the girls, with the dead scorpion hidden in a piece of paper. She smiled after seeing it was dead and made me through it in the garbage, I obliged. Then asked her if they are deadly and with a hand gesture she showed me how an arm would swell up, looked pretty painful I thought.

Black Scorpion 

Deepa was not the only one the dead scorpion startled that day, I had leapt myself upon leaving the shower to find the kittens playing tennis with the carcass on my bedroom floor. Presumably, they had found it under my bed, who knows when it had died or how long it had been there, but it could not have been long as the ants had not claimed it as a prize yet.

Forward 3 weeks and a torrential downpour filled the garden with water and soaked everything else around. Gem and Ike my Scottish friends were over for dinner, unlike other nights where we enjoyed dinner below the stars out in the garden, we were huddled in the sanctuary of the covered restaurant listening to the rain pelting relentlessly on the corrugated roof.

I hurried back to my room requiring the toilet, seeing the surfboards laying outside on my surfboard bag I decided to drag them inside. I grabbed both sides and begun pulling, when I felt a sharp prick in my finger, like a needle, I drew back my right hand and dropped the bag. It had felt like a bee sting and on closer observation I could see a little bubble of blood had formed. Cautiously I lifted the bag for closer examination, there in attack mode, tail curled up I noticed it, I leapt 6 foot backwards dropping the bag again. Heart racing I squeezed my finger to try eject the poison, by this time I had already had my second Lion beer, so I even tried sucking it out, like in the movies.

I returned my focus back on the little black cul-prate armed with a broom, it clung below the bag, finally with a mighty sweep it slide across the cement floor out into the darkness and slowing rain. Hastily I ran back to the dinner party, shocked Daya decided he would have a go squeezing my finger, now very tender, lucky for him he could not feel a thing. We stopped to watch my finger swell, first the tip turned red then the stem started to balloon, all I could think of was Deepa's hand gesture of my whole arm swelling, Ike joked about my new paddling ability for surfing. While Gem captured the event on film waiting in anticipation for the death image.

Daya, always ready for an emergency jumped on his bike to race home in search of his 'special medicine', which he claimed was purchased from the local snake catcher, I had visions of some syrupy mixture in a dirty

Special Medicine 

bottle. Triumphantly he returned 15 minutes later with a plastic container, which he opened it to reveal a small chunk of wood, we all wondered what I would have to do with it. Sceptical I let him operate, taping the piece of wood to my finger over the wound, he smiled and gave us a speech of the power of this, 'special medicine'.

Happy we returned to drinking and chatting, like nothing had happened, when to our amazement within 20 minutes the swelling had all but disappeared  They always say local medicine is the best remedy and I'll give Daya credit, he proved this theory correct. By the morning it was only my head that hurt and the swelling had totally vanished.