My room has become my enemy, not the haven it should be. Almost midnight. I can’t sleep because I don’t know WHERE to sleep. I was trying to fall asleep on bare concrete after I ditched my mattress earlier. I rolled over to turn off my music and in the blue glow of my MP3 player a shape emerged, a foreign shadow not supposed to be there – a scorpion!! This was inches from my face! Combined with my stress and loneliness and lack of sleep, it sent me into a panic attack after I safely swept the thing out of my room (me in bare feet).
This was the THIRD scorpion today. In the afternoon I was reading on my mattress (really two foam cushions on the floor). The electricity went out and as I stood up to turn off my computer I nearly stepped on that unfamiliar shape…which took my brain a fraction to identify…scorpion! I tried to keep it in the flashlight beam (remember the lights are out), but of course that just scared it scurrying away to mysteriously disappear in the folds of my cushions. I poked around to find it and made a frantic sweep of my room. No sign. Great—even worse not knowing where it was. I guessed it hid up into the internal grassy matting of my mattress as it is all ripped up and old. I gingerly escorted the mattress out of my bedroom. Hence, I was left sleeping on concrete. I did a thorough sweep of the room and no bugs, no spiders, no creepy crawlers. Ok.
But, then talking on the phone later, I was pacing around my room, closed the door, and lo and behold, what was on the other side? Scorpion! This one I sprayed with bug repellent.
Back to now, midnight. How am I going to sleep? Sitting on a chair? I feel surrounded. I am not a spider person, but I deal. I don’t deal well with dangerous stinging things next to my face.
~~~~~~~~~~
The next morning I dutifully wrote out the Thai script for scorpion (pronounced maeng bong) copied from my dictionary. I wanted to be sure the sanctuary staff understood my night. At breakfast in case my verbal pronunciation was off, I gave Yaai the sheet. She got a kick out of it and showed everyone all day my “problem.” They confirmed with the rains the scorpions come inside (but I had yet to see any up to this point). Everyone said just kill them (fine), but I want to know how to prevent myself from rolling onto one in the middle of the night!
~~~~~~~~~~
After all of this, I ended up getting stung anyway….by a swarm of bees in the forest during fieldwork!
This was the THIRD scorpion today. In the afternoon I was reading on my mattress (really two foam cushions on the floor). The electricity went out and as I stood up to turn off my computer I nearly stepped on that unfamiliar shape…which took my brain a fraction to identify…scorpion! I tried to keep it in the flashlight beam (remember the lights are out), but of course that just scared it scurrying away to mysteriously disappear in the folds of my cushions. I poked around to find it and made a frantic sweep of my room. No sign. Great—even worse not knowing where it was. I guessed it hid up into the internal grassy matting of my mattress as it is all ripped up and old. I gingerly escorted the mattress out of my bedroom. Hence, I was left sleeping on concrete. I did a thorough sweep of the room and no bugs, no spiders, no creepy crawlers. Ok.
But, then talking on the phone later, I was pacing around my room, closed the door, and lo and behold, what was on the other side? Scorpion! This one I sprayed with bug repellent.
Back to now, midnight. How am I going to sleep? Sitting on a chair? I feel surrounded. I am not a spider person, but I deal. I don’t deal well with dangerous stinging things next to my face.
~~~~~~~~~~
The next morning I dutifully wrote out the Thai script for scorpion (pronounced maeng bong) copied from my dictionary. I wanted to be sure the sanctuary staff understood my night. At breakfast in case my verbal pronunciation was off, I gave Yaai the sheet. She got a kick out of it and showed everyone all day my “problem.” They confirmed with the rains the scorpions come inside (but I had yet to see any up to this point). Everyone said just kill them (fine), but I want to know how to prevent myself from rolling onto one in the middle of the night!
~~~~~~~~~~
After all of this, I ended up getting stung anyway….by a swarm of bees in the forest during fieldwork!
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