I Got Stung By a Scorpion

And it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

I was in the storage room of an artisan house, gathering traditional bags, dresses, and kitchen items to put on display for incoming tourists. I picked up three gourds and was crossing the room to grab a fourth when the scorpion stung me.

I roared. It felt like a wasp sting, if the wasp had ingested steroids for several years and upgraded to a Cadillac stinger.

Dropping the gourds and grabbing my finger, I stomped out, shouting some English words that didn’t need translating. Juan, who was helping me set up, asked if something had bitten me. I said something incoherent, probably along the lines of “M-m-m-m, uuuhhhggh!!” and he went into the storage room to investigate.

Just a flesh wound

For five minutes, the pain was intense and I tromped around complaining and cursing and kissing my finger while Juan investigated the gourds with a stick. He soon came out and said a scorpion had escaped to the ceiling. We looked at the wound and sure enough, there was one little stinger-sized hole in my finger, surrounded by red swelling. After about seven minutes however, all pain was gone and I was back to displaying artisan goods.

I know a girl who got stung on her eyelid and said the pain lasted 30 minutes. Another was stung on the arm and it lasted for four hours. A Panamanian once explained to me that the pain lasts a few hours and then you get hungry. So I was expecting something a lot worse. Juan said I’d been stung by a “house” scorpion and that mountain scorpions are the painful ones.

So I got stung by a sissy scorpion. I just hope they never get access to steroids or Cadillac upgrades cause even the sissy sting hurt like hell.