there are a few things you expect when moving to a new country. the food: different. the language: different. the slang: unrecognizable. the people: different and yet the same.
you'd find among my top 10 day-to-day differences things like living with three straight guys, learning after 11 years to eat some meat, doing laundry by hand and negotiating cobblestone streets in heels. no really--i could write a how-to pamphlet. and for those of you scoffing at the thought of needing help figuring that out: try it sometime.
but friday i added a new one to my list: how to deal with scorpions.
perhaps i should back up to say this: i am not generally afraid of bugs. if it's not stuck in my hair, i have no issue. i'm not what i would call particularly outdoorsy, but fear of the wild and many-sectioned is not accurate either. anyway, i take a certain amount of femme pride in dealing with things on my own, bugs or otherwise. you call on your butch friends to kill every cockroach and pretty soon they think you're doing it because you CAN'T and not because you got tired of disinfecting your shoes in the tub post-encounter.
but here, i have been the Chosen One for plagues of little and large many-legged and winged bastards. a neon orange moth literally the size of my hand? flew at my head repeatedly. i'm surprised it still had capacity to fly since supposedly if you touch the damn things their wings are too fragile to go on flying. not so this one, my friends, no no. i admit, had it been blue instead of orange (a color i detest) i might have found the whole thing more agreeable, but that's a color-conscious femme for you.
on the list of other Bug Incidents:
feet attacked by giant red ants? check. i think they were after my red toenails in a sense of camaraderie or something.
cicada-like bugs falling on my head in the outhouse? check. twice.
grossly poisonous spiders in the shower and above the bed? check.
earwig-like-creatures in my heels? check (and killed with the same heel as poetic justice).
some strange swimming bug in the water i use to wash my clothes? check.
some strange running bug in my bed during the summer? check a few times. that little thing was FAST...
...and you get the point. bugs and me: not usually good friends, no matter how much they enjoy tormenting greeting me, but not usually a serious problem.
and then comes friday. i'm cooking dinner while my sweety does dishes, all is fine, until all of a sudden he started yelling in obvious pain.
now, i assumed this was a matter of getting cut by stray knives or something in an over-crowded sink. but that, i guess, would be too simple for a bug attractor like myself.
no, it was a scorpion.
a scorpion that had crawled up our pipes to the kitchen sink during the (warm) day we had no water. and it was just hanging out there, waiting, and then stung my sweety's hand.
now, like anyone who has no experience with scorpions i know only that the smaller the more poisonous. and you know, they should only be living in a warm place (like desert warm, not a city where, when it reaches 90, everyone's ready to go in for the day and sleep because it never gets that hot here).
but here was a wee scorpion (about the size of my thumb) that had not only stung my sweety, it was now trying to look inconspicuous on the kitchen floor.
i got a screwdriver from my tool bag and killed it. i wanted to just crush it with my big high heels, like i imagined really Good Femmes do, but then we couldn't show it to the doctor. and let's be real, while i've been known to stomp cockroaches with my heels (hello nyc, thats half the reason you BUY the high heel boots), i didn't really want to have to then scrape scorpion off my boots. instead, i put it in little paper envelope and took scorpion and sweety to the emergency room.
an injection and some meds later, we returned home. apparently the scorpions around here, while poisonous and painful, are not *too* poisonous, and you could get away with peeing on the sting (i dont know why, the ammonia in pee maybe?) and not need hydrocortizone. which is good to know, i suppose, should another little scorpion with too much chutzpa decide to visit.
though, honestly, if it does, i'm going to designate my red heels the Crushers and stomp away. it is far too much stress for me, thinking about scorpions every time i want to do the dishes. i already have enough bug-related things to negotiate and the stress gives me a tendency to pick away at my nail polish, which, once the stressful situation is over, really makes annoying femme OCD kick in (for me, having chipped polish even in winter, when all i wear is boots, is a problem. i still take my socks off SOMEtimes...) but that is a whole other story...
