No Shirt, No Shoes, No Scorpions, No Problem...

I currently live and work on a farm in northern California, which means that I end up doing a variety of different sorts of activities throughout my day, that often call for costume changes. I am oddly always wearing the appropriate gear for each activity, from gardening, to moving equipment and driving all sorts of vehicles, then to playing various sports, tennis, swimming, mountain biking and also hammocking...For work, I have two different kinds of boots a pair for hiking and another for rain/water/mud, and I will change out of one pair if I think I will need to wear a slightly more appropriate pair for the next activity. Corey, who is a volunteer out here, does the opposite. He has feet. Bare feet. And he wears his bare feet for any and every activity. 

The other day, we went from planting, harvesting, watering and the like, to moving furniture and clearing out a storage trailer. I did this with proper, and fashionable, footwear and Corey did this wearing my flip flops, which was kind of a big step up for him. So we spent some time moving heavy things and boxes of random stuff into and out of the dark, critter-infested trailer. Once we cleared out the trailer, we close it up and begin going through some of the boxes. One of the boxes is full of clothes belonging to Donnie. We have no earthly idea who Donnie is, but we have a box of his/her clothes. Corey pulled out a fleece and tried it on before suddenly recoiling in pain. I personally didn't think it looked that bad on him, but then he said “Something bit me!” so I'm pretty sure he wasn't talking about the fleece. Then he jumped back and repeated his discovery that something indeed had bitten him on his foot, but this time with more curse words, and that is when we noticed the rather sizable (albeit still tiny) scorpion scuttle away from my flip flop that he kicked off. 

He then proceeded to basically keep his shit together and describe in detail how much it burns. He hopped around for several awkwardly hilarious moments and asked us more than once, "Guys, am I gonna die?" Always helpful in a crisis, I looked him in the eye and in a soothing voice, tinged with concern, I uttered these words of comfort, "probably not...I mean who gets killed by a tiny scorpion?" (Pretty much everyone, according to google, but we'll get to that later) 

We did offer to exact revenge in his name, but Corey didn't really give us a clear sign, since he was preoccupied with potentially coming to terms with the end of his life, which was rapidly approaching. However, being the brave person that I am, I picked up the scorpion in case we needed anti-venom to save Corey's rapidly fading life and then...(I am totally kidding...) Mostly I let out a high-pitched shriek and stepped on the thing and then wiped my boot off.  Now that the tiny threat had been eliminated, we headed back to the land of medical supplies and internet to be better prepared to help Corey and/or read him his last rites.

Once we made it up the hill and found the internet again, I did two things that turned out to do the exact opposite of calm Corey down.

I immediately googled scorpion stings and found twenty or so stories about scorpion-related deaths, paralysis and general tales of woe. The first three articles in this search were: Deathstalker, the third most venomous scorpion in the world...Scorpions: a major cause of death in...(and finally)The Most Venomous Scorpion in the World! DANGEROUS!!!-YouTube. I am not sure why they were in this order. Thankfully, there were also pictures of all sorts of scorpions, which was also super helpful since they all looked exactly like the one I smooshed...

Since I was inundated with scorpion death facts, I thought I should narrow my search. I then googled red scorpion stings, only to discover that Red Scorpion is a late eighties action film starring the irreplaceable Dolph Lundgren as a Soviet Spetnaz agent sent to Africa to defeat communist-fighting rebels. Sadly this film came out to mixed reviews, rated 2 out of 5 stars by IMDB and one measly star by rotten tomatoes. This is clearly life-changing information, but did little to alleviate Corey's fear of death (from scorpions, perhaps from Russians though). So THEN I googled California scorpion stings and I got several helpful responses. Most of them claimed that scorpion stings in this geographic region are like a wasp sting and burn at first, but subside after thirty minutes. There is one scorpion, the Arizona bark scorpion, that can cause you some serious problems and if you begin frothing at the mouth, going numb in places and generally visibly dying, you need to seek immediate medical attention. The downside to this information is that there are no pictures, nor descriptions of the offending scorpion, so I cannot tell if Corey will be just fine, or will surely perish...Remember all that brave stuff I didn't do...yeah, that would've been helpful here.

The second thing I did that did not help Corey calm down, was to read him every single thing I just told you in great detail, without any confirmation one way or the other that he would be fine...As it turns out most of the pages say that after thirty minutes you will know if you are fine or not and this whole escapade took about half an hour. So right about the time google stopped telling me my friend would surely die, he looked over and said "I think I'm fine...it doesn't really hurt anymore." 

Memorial Services for Corey will be held on....I am KIDDING, he's fine.

Also, Corey is still going barefoot everywhere on the farm, because if he puts shoes on, then the scorpions win...and that is just a recipe for terrorism.