Adventure of the Scorpion Slayers

Since my last blog posting, I have yet another job title to add to my list - although this time I hope to use my new set of skills rarely if ever again… Here’s the story only slightly dramatized several days after the event, definitely not a big deal but something that never happened to me in Ohio. It was a dark and stormy night, as my Brazilian housemate Natasha and I were sitting in our living room talking together. The electricity had shut down at 9:30 pm as usual but true to our college student habits, both of us thought it was too early for bed and just sat in total darkness finishing our conversation. Eventually I needed to use the bathroom and had almost decided I could feel my way around without a flashlight when I remembered the large-ish cockroach I found next to my toothbrush the day before. So I grabbed my mini flashlight and fearlessly entered the bathroom. That’s when I saw something crawling in the shower… Now at home in the USA anything moving in the shower would bother me, but here in the jungle we have lots of bugs that crawl everywhere and especially these long (2-3 inch), hard centipedes that crunch when stepped on to kill. I don’t really like the crunch or mess afterward so I’ve stopped stepping on them and most find their way to the shower and drown eventually. But centipedes were NOT what I saw in the dark shower this time – and you’ve probably guessed that already by the title of this post. There in the bottom of our shower was an angry scorpion trying its best to crawl up the slippery tiles and right out at me. I had been warned about stepping on scorpions because their sting is very painful and can be poisonous, but people mentioned it like a person would mistakenly step on a very small one. This scorpion was at least six inches long and the only way I would step on it or even get close would be if I didn’t see it…hmm, like in the dark. I left the bathroom as fast as possible and did what I always do when I have any jungle related problems or any problems here at all… I got Natasha, my teacher of all things Brazilian. Much to my relief, the scorpion AND its size surprised her as well – at least I wasn’t imagining things or expected to encounter one of these every day.  She quickly summed up the problem by saying we have to kill it. Well I knew that, I just didn’t know how without getting up close and personal. Armed with a pair of my Old Navy flip flops, Natasha started looking around for a can of bug spray… but of course there was none to be found in our house. So I had the courageous idea of going next door to see what our neighbor would do in our situation. Well the power was off for the entire school campus so her house was dark and I’m afraid she was sleeping, but one advantage of screens in the windows with no glass is that when we called her name and mentioned the word scorpion, and she was quickly out of bed with a big can of bug spray for us. Natasha grabbed the answer to our problem and heroically marched back into the bathroom to conquer our foe. She aimed the aerosol can at the scorpion and sprayed until the whole shower was filled with fumes and white mist. I was helping of course, by standing in the doorway watching and telling her not to get too close or breathe in the spray. We closed the bathroom door and went back to the living room to resume our previous conversation which had been rudely interrupted by my nasty discovery. Both of us were much too distracted though and soon went back to check on the demise of Mr. Scorpion. He was still moving but very slowly, so I did the second fatal spray-until-the-shower-is-full. We gave him some more time to die, then went back and just to make sure, smashed him good and hard with a shoe. It wasn’t until the excitement was over that I thought of taking pictures. So I have a few shots of a crushed scorpion lying next to a United States quarter to show its size, but somehow it doesn’t look nearly as terrifying shriveled and dead as when it was trying to climb out of the shower, through the hole in our bathroom door, and attack us both in our sleep, or so we imagined.  I have to admit that I didn’t sleep very well that night, and the next day after returning the bug spray to our neighbor, we discussed at length exactly how the scorpion had invaded our shower.  Our conclusion is that the scorpion came up through the drain cover on the shower floor and was probably stuck in the shower since it really couldn’t climb out. So much for the thought “we’re both going to be killed by the attack of the gigantic scorpions” from the night before… somehow in the daylight the whole story didn’t seem as dramatic or creepy. But as a precaution, I now make sure to always cover the shower drain with a pair of my trusty flip flops while I’m in there. See, lots of good has come from this experience… in addition to my valuable new set of killing skills, finding little old cockroaches in the bathroom doesn’t bother me nearly as much anymore; at least they don’t sting, right? LOL. Thus ends the short lived adventure of the SCORPION SLAYERS …happily and hopefully forever after :)