Stung By A Scorpion! FINALLY!!

Hello!

You might be wondering about the title of this post:  Stung By A Scorpion!  FINALLY!!  

Finally??  Really??

Allow me to explain:

Living in the Phoenix area you quickly realize your ARE going to have several varieties of uninvited house-guests...and among them are Arizona bark scorpions.

Bark Scorpion - Photo: Brian Basgen, Sahuarita, AZ
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

I have two cats...and they have really kept the critter count down in my home and fortunately, I've read that cats are immune to scorpion stings.

But since moving here 16 years ago I've seen a number of scorpions inside...and if the cats didn't get to them first, I quickly help send them on their way to scorpion heaven.

Up until recently I even kept a jar that I would put them in as sort of a macabre way of keeping track of how many I'd thus encountered...AND it was over half full.  (including a few "deceased-by-my-hand" black widow spiders who'd also dared make their residence here)


So...you must be thinking Phoenix sounds like a terrible place to live!

Well........since we've just gone through numerous 114 degree days this summer accompanied by unusually high humidly...throw in a few scorpions and black widows...and I might be a little less enamored with desert living myself right now!!

; )   

Anyway...back to our scorpion tale  < Pun intended : )

I figured I'd probably be stung by a scorpion sooner or later.  Almost everyone you meet here has a story about a family member or friend who's been stung...or their own brush with destiny.

Over the years, I even considered just allowing one to sting me to get it over with...but always decided it'd be better to wait and let fate choose the day and hour.

Well...the waiting is over!

This evening I was walking barefooted into the kitchen and felt a very sharp pain on the bottom length of my 4th toe.

I've stepped on slivers of broken glass, or little thorns that find their way into the carpet...so I wasn't sure what had just happened.

It was a bit dark so I turned on some bright lights to investigate and right where I'd been walking was a scorpion that I immediately dispatched to meet it's ancestors.
 

Acrylic Painting:  "Fear" - Copyright 2007, Jephyr

I'd finally been stung! 

For a moment, it crossed my mind that some people go into anaphylactic shock...but reassured myself that as a kid in Colorado I'd been stung by so many bees over the summers...that I'd surely built up some kind of immunity.

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Now:  At least 3 hours have passed since being stung...and I can still really feel it.
 

Although, I've been bitten by red ants before and would put this below that on the pain chart.  OTOH it is much worse than those Colorado bee stings administered to me as a child.

There is still tingling and a steady but bearable pain just on that toe.  Some people report swelling but I haven't experienced any of that yet.

So now when people gather in darkened corners of rooms to talk in hushed tones about being stung...I can nod my head knowingly and officially say I too have felt the scorpions wrath...and have lived to tell the tale.

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NOTE:  While I've written somewhat humorously (I hope) about this experience...some people do have stronger reactions to scorpion stings.

Bark Scorpion Photo:
Musides (Public Domain) 

If so....usually more severe symptoms will happen within minutes.  This may include vision problems, muscle twitching, a racing heart, etc.  

So if you or someone you know is stung...and begin to have conditions worse than I've described...contact emergency help immediately.

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What To Do If You Are Stung By A Scorpion is a good resource for more information.

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Thank you as always for looking in on my corner of the world!

Please visit Jephyr.com for more examples of my artwork and photography.