© Chad Clark 20-6-00
The next time you spend a night in the desert, don’t unroll your
sleeping bag until just before bedtime. Of over 1000 species of scorpion known to man, the
chances are that the one that just crawled into your cool dark sleeping bag was one of the
20 poisonous ones.
Scorpions come in all colours, shapes and sizes, but basically measure between 5 and 15 cm, have 8 legs, up to 10 ‘ eyes’, a couple of claws, a nasty tail and some very strange habits. During the day they’re to be found hiding from the desert heat under rocks and stones, only venturing out in the comparative cool of the night to check out the vibe. They detect their prey, and indeed danger, by picking up these vibrations through hairy sensors on their tail, legs, feet and even their belly which they tend to drag along the ground. They also drag their bellies over rocks whilst mating in a bizarre ‘rock and roll’ kind of way. First of all they swing each other around by the claws in a type of jitterbug dance routine. Having reached a suitable state of excitement, the male proceeds to leave a sticky deposit on a rock and then promptly wipes the poor girl around in it. If all goes according to plan, 9 months later she has around 30 baby scorpions. These are born live and clamber straight up her legs and onto her back for a weeks acclimatisation, before independently heading off into the big wide world to reap havoc for the next 5 years or so, unless they climb into my sleeping bag that is.
Then again, they wouldn’t attack you on purpose. They prefer
insects,
spiders, centipedes and other
scorpions. If they sting a Bedouin they’d probably survive, since the Bedouin believe
that if you kill a scorpion you kill yourself too. Sting anyone else though and
they’d probably get squashed, though if it’s a female carrying babies on her
back, these little toughies may well escape and come back looking for vengeance later on,
so it’s best to burn them just in case.
Should you have the misfortune to be bitten by a scorpion whilst out in the
desert your options are fairly limited. You have but a few seconds to apply a tourniquet
and squeeze the venomous blood out of your veins. If you weren’t quick enough
you’d better try to find ‘El Howi’, the Bedouin witch doctor whose magical
spit instantly cures such ills. Failing that, rumour has it you could try to draw out the
poison with sugar cubes, copper coins or even a rare kind of Kenyan rock that has to be
washed in milk ! That is, of course, if your mother didn’t have the foresight to rub
ground up baby scorpion paste onto her nipples whilst breastfeeding you, thus building up
your immunity to scorpion stings from an early age. If you weren’t that fortunate,
find solace in the fact that although the wound will swell up and you’ll start
frothing at the mouth, have difficulty in breathing and start twitching and convulsing, to
actually die is fairly rare, unless you’re young, old or have a heart problem of
course.
However, prevention is always the best form of cure, so just try to avoid them. Find a place to sleep out in the open, away from all the shrubs, and avoid turning over any rocks. Like this you’ll probably frighten them away with all your heavy vibes anyway, so after all that, you’ve really been worried about nothing.
Oh, by the way, don’t forget to check in your shoes in the morning !