Waking up in the morning is hard enough when you’re waking
up before the sun rises. It was even more difficult today because as I was
leaving my room I found myself face-to-pincher with a scorpion. People warned
us of them when we arrived, but for some reason I never thought I would
actually come across one. Boy was I wrong!
He was little and yellowish in color. He didn’t move much
and when he did it was very slowly. This was much different than the lightning
fast gecko we found in the bathroom last week. I calmly went to the stairwell
to call for my roommates to come upstairs and bring a shoe to smash him with.
But 30 seconds was all it took for him to get away. We turned our room inside
out and squashed all of our shoes with a broom just in case he burrowed in one
of them. After all, scorpions like to hide in dark places. But we couldn’t find
him. I convinced myself he was hiding in the pair of shoes he was closes to the
last time I saw him, so I swept the shoes outside to “let him free.” It was all
I could do.
All day I told students and teachers about my encounter with
the scorpion. Everybody I talked to was very nonchalant about it. They all had
their own stories about their encounters with scorpions. The worst that happens
is you get stung, in which case you go to the hospital for treatment. No big
deal. But then, a student informed me that the scorpion I saw was one of the
more dangerous ones. Apparently, the smaller they are, the more poisonous. So I
guess feeling safer because he was a “little guy” who didn’t move quickly was
wrong.
At the end of the day my roommates and I were afraid to go
home. We ended up going to Lynne’s house for advice. She was shocked. This was
the first sighting of a scorpion in our complex in four years, which I’m pretty
sure is when the houses were built. She sent us home with a can of Baygon,
which we diligently sprayed all of our windows and doors with to keep the
creepy crawlers out.
Unfortunately, the Baygon was not enough to keep the bugs
away from us. It may have even caused them to come out of their hiding spots.
The first sighting of the evening was of a scorpion—hopefully the same one from
before! This time it was Cynhia that called us all upstairs—of course it was in
our room again. Within seconds Erin was ready for battle, with a shoe in hand
and close toed shoes on her feet. She valiantly stepped up and squashed it. Its
guts spewed all over the floor, and I sprayed it with some Baygon just to make
sure he was really dead. We’re too afraid to pick up his remains because
scorpion tails can still sting after the scorpion itself has died. So we are
too afraid to move it and are leaving him on the floor until the morning.
As Cynhia and I were writing our blogs we spotted another
creepy insect—a cucaracha! Cockroaches are ugly, and much larger than the
scorpion we encountered. But fortunately, they are not poisonous. So when we
saw him we didn’t hold back our emotions. We screamed and ran, and wildly
sprayed him with Baygon. But it didn’t stop him from scurrying out of our room
and into Alyssa and Erin’s. He tried to escape out the door that connects to a
patio, but was trapped. I took this time to spray him with more Baygon which
slowed his movements enough for us to squash him.
Even though we’ve won all of our battles with the bugs
today, Cynhia and I are sleeping with the lights on. I can’t help but think a
scorpion is coming to attack me every time I see a shadow or feel my hair brush
up against my arm. Especially since Cynhia’s class informed her that every time
a scorpion lays eggs it produces 1,000 baby scorpions. I hope we killed our
scorpion before it had a chance to reproduce! I’m also thinking about inviting
all of the geckos of Sayulita to live in our house. Apparently, they eat
scorpions so they can protect us!
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