It's actually been slightly chilly here the last couple of days. It has been raining at night and windy during the day. Today the clouds all happen to be gray, seeming to promise another evening of rain.
On my way to school today, a dog crossed the road in front of us with a small pup struggling to keep up. I vocalized my thoughts on how cute that was while the others in the car laughed. They admire my affection for animals here, but they don't share it with me.
While walking home from school, I came across several baby chicks, 6 piglets and 1 calf, stopping to say hello to each of them.
So as you can see, it must be spring because there are so many babies running around now. The point of this blog today is to talk about one of these newborns in particular. I wish it was my newborn nephew in America that I was going to tell you about, but as I haven't met him yet, I don't have much to say.
No, this "baby" is the small scorpion I found in my room this morning while getting ready to leave for school. I'm calling it a baby because it was small, whether or not it was truly a baby, I can't say. I'm just trying to stick with the theme of spring here. Now, for those of us who know anything about scorpions, or for those who have been fortunate enough to see the newest Indiana Jones movie know that, "when it comes to scorpions, the bigger the better kid!"
Back to this "baby" or SMALL scorpion in my room! Lucky for me, I have recently become an expert on the less inticing creatures of South Africa. You see, there are some Australians that work with one of my schools. They come once a year and stay for a week. They bring all kinds of fun things for the teachers and students to use and make their educational practices better. When the Aussies showed up 2 weeks ago, they were surprised to find an American Peace Corps volunteer working at "their school". However, they were very excited to now have a contact here that they can keep in touch with and find out information about what the schools biggest needs and challenges are. So to commemorate this happy occasion of our union, they offered to take me out for the day. They understood that I don't make much money and the Australian dollar is doing quite well right now, so they said they would pay for all of my expenses on this excursion. I happily accepted and we made arrangements to leave the next day after school. They didn't tell me what we would be doing or I may not have gone...
We ended up at a reptile park. Having seen both Aracnophobia and Anaconda, I wasn't excited. But never the less, these were my new best friends and I couldn't complain.
We were introduced to Chris who was immediately dubbed "The Crocodile Hunter of South Africa". A nice young man born in Joburg who is living his life's dream working with the scariest of creatures.
Chris decided to start with the "less scary" creatures as he called them, which included spiders and scorpions. He confirmed that Indy was correct in saying the bigger the better. He showed us a massive scorpion and even gave us lucky souls a chance to hold the blessed creature!
"Don't worry", he said, "if it stings you, it's only about 1/5 the pain of a beesting". Lovely! This thing might actually sting us! But it came down to peer pressure and my new friends talked me into holding it. Chris pointed out to us the large pincers. He said because this scorpion has strong pincers, it doesnt need poison to sting it's prey, it can just grab it and eat. So this one was of no threat to us. Now this isn't ALWAYS the case as he showed us another fairly large beast that was poisonous, however, you could see that it's pincers were much smaller.
Back to the one in my room. The actual body was quite small. Bigger than your average spider but small compared to the scorpion I had held 2 weeks earlier. So I decided I wanted a closer look to assess this situation. I took a photo that will come later. The tail (or stinger if you will) was the same size as the body if not bigger. That's where they keep the poison! The pincers or claws, were microscopic.
Oh God, I'm about to die!!!
Now he (or she, I didnt get THAT close) was just sitting next to my shoe. It wasn't moving and it's tail was hanging to one side. I thought it might possibly be dead, so I grabbed my small hand broom and dust pan to sweep it up and throw it outside (karmic law wouldn't let me kill it, so I was hoping that it truly was already dead).
OOOps, it wasn't dead, it ran under my bed.
I went outside to tell my host family about this life or death situation that had presented itself. "Um, there's like a scorpion in my room, and I'm not going back in there until it's gone. Thanks."
My host sister, being the brave soul that she is, grabbed the broom. Unfortunately I had to go back in with her. I never knew scorpions could climb walls! I looked under the bed and didn't see it. Luckily she was even more of an expert in this matter than I was. She told me to move the bed and there he (she) was in the corner starting to climb. She wacked it with the broom and swept it out. Half of me felt bad that she had to kill it, but I got over it when she said, "oh, that's the one with the strongest poison!" and walked off to finish her laundry.
On my way to school today, a dog crossed the road in front of us with a small pup struggling to keep up. I vocalized my thoughts on how cute that was while the others in the car laughed. They admire my affection for animals here, but they don't share it with me.
While walking home from school, I came across several baby chicks, 6 piglets and 1 calf, stopping to say hello to each of them.
So as you can see, it must be spring because there are so many babies running around now. The point of this blog today is to talk about one of these newborns in particular. I wish it was my newborn nephew in America that I was going to tell you about, but as I haven't met him yet, I don't have much to say.
No, this "baby" is the small scorpion I found in my room this morning while getting ready to leave for school. I'm calling it a baby because it was small, whether or not it was truly a baby, I can't say. I'm just trying to stick with the theme of spring here. Now, for those of us who know anything about scorpions, or for those who have been fortunate enough to see the newest Indiana Jones movie know that, "when it comes to scorpions, the bigger the better kid!"
Back to this "baby" or SMALL scorpion in my room! Lucky for me, I have recently become an expert on the less inticing creatures of South Africa. You see, there are some Australians that work with one of my schools. They come once a year and stay for a week. They bring all kinds of fun things for the teachers and students to use and make their educational practices better. When the Aussies showed up 2 weeks ago, they were surprised to find an American Peace Corps volunteer working at "their school". However, they were very excited to now have a contact here that they can keep in touch with and find out information about what the schools biggest needs and challenges are. So to commemorate this happy occasion of our union, they offered to take me out for the day. They understood that I don't make much money and the Australian dollar is doing quite well right now, so they said they would pay for all of my expenses on this excursion. I happily accepted and we made arrangements to leave the next day after school. They didn't tell me what we would be doing or I may not have gone...
We ended up at a reptile park. Having seen both Aracnophobia and Anaconda, I wasn't excited. But never the less, these were my new best friends and I couldn't complain.
We were introduced to Chris who was immediately dubbed "The Crocodile Hunter of South Africa". A nice young man born in Joburg who is living his life's dream working with the scariest of creatures.
Chris decided to start with the "less scary" creatures as he called them, which included spiders and scorpions. He confirmed that Indy was correct in saying the bigger the better. He showed us a massive scorpion and even gave us lucky souls a chance to hold the blessed creature!
"Don't worry", he said, "if it stings you, it's only about 1/5 the pain of a beesting". Lovely! This thing might actually sting us! But it came down to peer pressure and my new friends talked me into holding it. Chris pointed out to us the large pincers. He said because this scorpion has strong pincers, it doesnt need poison to sting it's prey, it can just grab it and eat. So this one was of no threat to us. Now this isn't ALWAYS the case as he showed us another fairly large beast that was poisonous, however, you could see that it's pincers were much smaller.
Back to the one in my room. The actual body was quite small. Bigger than your average spider but small compared to the scorpion I had held 2 weeks earlier. So I decided I wanted a closer look to assess this situation. I took a photo that will come later. The tail (or stinger if you will) was the same size as the body if not bigger. That's where they keep the poison! The pincers or claws, were microscopic.
Oh God, I'm about to die!!!
Now he (or she, I didnt get THAT close) was just sitting next to my shoe. It wasn't moving and it's tail was hanging to one side. I thought it might possibly be dead, so I grabbed my small hand broom and dust pan to sweep it up and throw it outside (karmic law wouldn't let me kill it, so I was hoping that it truly was already dead).
OOOps, it wasn't dead, it ran under my bed.
I went outside to tell my host family about this life or death situation that had presented itself. "Um, there's like a scorpion in my room, and I'm not going back in there until it's gone. Thanks."
My host sister, being the brave soul that she is, grabbed the broom. Unfortunately I had to go back in with her. I never knew scorpions could climb walls! I looked under the bed and didn't see it. Luckily she was even more of an expert in this matter than I was. She told me to move the bed and there he (she) was in the corner starting to climb. She wacked it with the broom and swept it out. Half of me felt bad that she had to kill it, but I got over it when she said, "oh, that's the one with the strongest poison!" and walked off to finish her laundry.
2 comments:
Wow!, that was a scary story. but it ended rather abruptly. she just walked out?
Dude seriously they don't even have the brain capacity to feel pain. It wont even know its dead, squish them :) I mean really if it comes down to you or the damn scorpion who are you gonna choose? you don't have to go around killing every one you see out side, but if it crosses the line and enters your domicile I say kill it.
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