Sting Operation. A Tutorial on actions to be taken when a Scorpion has entered your bed....

I knew when I put my arm back above my head that it wasn’t a bee, a wasp or any kind of small bug. I had just had the pleasure of being stung by a rather large wasp that had invaded my mosquito net the previous Monday, and so was quite familiar with the lovely feelings and particular curse words that accompany that particular experience. This pain was new and strange. It was near my left shoulder, and went both up and down my arm simultaneously, and was both stinging and numbing, with twinges of sharp pain and burning. Although it sounds like the general symptoms of a pretty horrific STI (if not in the proper geographic place on the body), due to the rapidity of its onset, I concluded it was a scorpion sting.

We were lying on J’s bed, singing along with his newly purchased pirated copy of “Rent” (damn I love that movie!) waiting for the apple pie to cool. All was right with the world. Whichever law of the universe says that when things are too good, something bad must happen was suddenly enforced. Either that or karma, actually.

About a month back K and I had gone out to the bush for my birthday celebrations. In the processing of zipping the tent she was stung on her finger by an elusive and fast departing enemy, which we were unable to find in the darkness to positively ID. At the time, this seemed to me to be shades of slightly hilarious. We consulted our host, a guy who had lived in and around the bush for most of his life, but due to having a few drinks in him was more than slightly unhelpful. K took some antihistamine and we went to sleep, although I did periodically wake up throughout the night and than wake her up to make sure she was still alive (what a good friend I am). She did not appreciate this. Her hand was sore for a week

As the sensations of burning, shooting, stinging and slight numbness that K had described were now running up and down my arm into my fingers, I had a pretty good idea of which bandit had assaulted me. I yelped and grabbed my arm, disrupting J right in the middle of the duet we were performing while viewing Mimi’s first scene in the movie. I whipped back the duvet we had been laying on and saw him. About the size of my pinky finger and nearly translucent, he was scurrying for cover.

Since J is more afraid of creepy crawlers that I am, he darted towards the door. I grabbed his empty wine glass and upended it, trapping the intruder in a glass coffin. We put him on the desk, theorizing that we would kill him through either suffocation or starvation. Neither of which was, in the end effective. (We got him the next day when R, an Eagle Scout whose phone was of course off when I called in a panic, suggested that we gas him by throwing a few alcohol rubbing pads in there with him. That did the job. PCV’s are SO resourceful.)

After we had imprisoned the culprit and I had assured J that there were no more scorpions in the bed, I joyously began the next natural course of action in a situation like this. I text messaged K. She was of course thrilled to laugh at me, and I was laughing right along with her. We quickly went through our running tally of shitty things that had happened to us since being in country (including but not limited to scorpion stings, stalkers, site relocation, mice, bank issues, thefts, weight lost or gained, length of water outages, housing problems, and sicknesses, and decided that we were now equal and one of us would have to work on one-upping the other, so we could alternately tease or brag to the other about how much rougher or easier we have it).

Then I text the PCMO, my mom, and most of my close PC friends in country, and some that I’m not in regular texting contact with as it was a holiday and text messages were cheap that day. Leave it to me to want to have to best story of the weekend. J was doing the same, although not mentioning it was me that got stung, only that there had been a scorpion in his bed, so that his story would sound better. So there we are, side by side, my arm pulsing, the characters of Rent singing, and both of us ignoring everything to text everyone that wasn’t with us what was happening. Only in the PC. The next round of incoming texts were, of course from people we hadn’t even initially text who had heard the story from texts they had received from others and wanted details. Ah, the PC “network”.

The PCMO called several times, asking about the make, model and color of my scorpion, and advised me to take a benedryl. I did so, and then she called back, telling me not to go to sleep. We ate the apple pie, which did sort of take the pain away temporarily. As the first and main thing you want to do after taking a bendryl is go to sleep, I made a list of people J should call if he awoke to find me dead or otherwise not breathing and laid down to watch the rest of the movie. The PCMO called a few more times, we went to sleep, and I’ve lived to tell the tale of another African adventure. What Next?