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Saturday, August 29, 2009
Posted
5:13 PM
by freelance radical
CRITTER AUDACITY |||||||||||| Several years ago, I read somewhere that our Indian tribes used to draw the poison out of scorpion-stings, by covering them with the flesh of a prickly-pear cactus leaf, so I carefully (they're full of really long needles!) took one of those leaves apart, cut out the thick green interior gook, wrapped it in foil, and put it in my freezer. This week, I thanked myself for having done that, because while I was pushing cement into some empty spaces in the wood around my front door, a scorpion attacked one of my fingers. I thought I would freak out with fear, since I had no idea what that sting might cause, but I remained amazingly calm, called my MD to catch him 10 minutes before he'd have left for the entire weekend, wrapped my finger in the foil-covered prickly-pear-gook from my freezer, and drove off. A really pleasant thought, is that when winter arrived in a couple of months, this scorpion would for sure have crawled over the half-an-inch that separated it from getting inside my home, from where it might have created a whole lot of totally spookier harm! And another pleasant thought is that I have now made it through an experience I had kinda secretly worried about during all the years that I've lived in the Southwest and heard all those fabricated scorpion-horror-stories with which some nasty individuals just love to scare innocent newcomers! UPDATE 1 1.....Scorpion venom contains the neurotoxin CLOROTOXIN 2.....I should have saved the offending scorpion 3.....The National Poison Control Call-in-Center's 4.....I should take an antihistamine pill.....so I swallowed UPDATE 2
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