Let me say this in no uncertain terms. I hate bugs. They give me the willies.
Up until recently, the bugs that bothered me the most were spiders. Notice I said – up until recently.
It was the spring of 2006 and I had been here in Italy for two or three months. Since our apartment wasn’t ready yet (there was someone else living there until July), we were staying in a small temporary apartment.
One rainy night, I got up to go to the bathroom and,passing through the hallway, happened to look down the two steps that led to the front door. What I saw made me scream, “Che c%$*o รจ?”
While I was kind of proud of myself for not screaming it in English (after all, I was only here a short time), I was afraid my suspicions would be proven correct, and they were. When O came out of the bedroom and saw it, he picked up his slipper, smacked it very hard, opened the door and swept it outside. Then he turned and said, “it was a scorpion”.
I think my voice got a little high and screechy when a repeated, “a scorpion?”.
He assured me that they weren’t like scorpions in America. If they sting you it hurts, but it’s like a wasp sting since they’re not particularly venomous. Of course, I’ve decided not to test that theory.
I’ve gone almost three years without seeing another scorpion, but I’m wondering if the rain makes them come out. We’ve been having a very rainy spring after a couple of years of drought.
I was horrified the other night to see one on the wall by our garage. We’re on the fourth floor, so I don’t expect to see them in the house (oh please no!), but I wasn’t particularly happy when I saw it down there either.
This one was relatively small (about the length of my pinky finger), so the picture is a little fuzzy since I wasn’t getting any closer to it than absolutely necessary. The first one I saw? Well, let’s just say that I saw it from a distance of 4 meters without my glasses (I’m very nearsighted), in the dark (just outside streetlamps for illumination), and I already had a pretty good idea what it was before O confirmed my hypothesis.
Even though my astrological sign is Scorpio, I feel no affinity for these “little” buggers.
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I’ve never seen one, and I hope I never do!
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Oooh! They definitely creep me out. I have seen scorpions too in real life. My brothers and some of their friends were out climbing rocks and they brought home a couple of scorpions. Luckily my mom quashed the idea of keeping them as “pets.”
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