Attacked

My wife, Barb, and I had just moved into our new house in the woods – not a Hansel and Gretel-like Forest – but close enough. The privacy was glorious, but we encountered terrors lying within the thickets.

 

One night, after returning home from dinner with friends, we turned on the lights, and I instantly stepped over something on my way to the kitchen. Barb shrieked, and I looked down. It was a snake with colorful rings of red, yellow and black circling its curling body.

Growing up in Florida, I realized that this was either a coral snake or a king snake. I knew the king snake was harmless, while the coral snake was one of the most-deadly snakes on the planet. I recalled an old rhyme about how you identified which snake was which and how the location of the colored rings would determine if the snake would make Jack lucky or dead. The rhythmic words understandably escaped me as I was straddling the invading serpent at the time. We had no internet, and it was not a convenient time to make a move for the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

 

To escape, I jumped as high as my body permitted. Grabbing my shovel from the garage, I tracked the snake as he slithered across our Mexican tile floor. I concluded that no matter what the old rhyme said, this snake would be unlucky. The snake stopped moving, and I slammed the shovel on him which created 2 wiggly snake segments and multiple pieces of broken tile. Donning garden gloves, I removed the snake and assessed the tile damage. “Damn. I hope it was a coral snake,” I muttered.

 

A few months later, Barb and I were sound asleep in bed when I felt what seemed like a bee sting on my ankle. I ignored it. I got stung again. “Crap, that hurt!” I yelled, which jolted Barb. I flicked on the lights.

“What is going on?” she asked.

“Get out of bed now!” I shouted.

 

I yanked the covers off the bed, and there he was: a huge scorpion. The arachnid stared right at me. He must have been 3” long, and he looked like a cross between a demonic shrimp and pissed-off crab. The scorpion’s tail was thick, tapered and curled up along its segmented back where it sported a steel-like stinger pointed right at me. If it were an inch larger, I may have called the cops.

I looked at the scorpion, then down at my ankle which was now bleeding (ok, slightly bleeding), and my first thought was: “Can you die from a scorpion bite?”

I barked orders at Barb who was still a little fuzzy and convinced that I was actively participating in a vivid dream. Finally, she spotted the nasty attacker at the foot of our bed.

“Oh my God!” she yelled.

 

I begged Barb to call the hospital to see what I should do about my punctures – like summoning an ambulance or finalizing my living will. I guarded the scorpion while she made the call. The creature did not move. He just stared me down.

 

The ER nurse told Barb to give me a Benadryl and if my breathing was unimpaired, I was fine. “My breathing is impaired, Barb!”, I snorted. Barb mockingly shook her head and walked towards the kitchen where we kept the medicine. I yelled at her to bring me my shovel – the same tool that ended the colorful snake’s life. She took her sweet time and finally returned to the bedroom. She held a glass of water and Benadryl which I quickly digested. She also held a broom – not my shovel – but a stinking broom!

She said, “Remember our broken Mexican tile? Well, that’s not happening to my bed.”

 

I yanked the broom from her unkind hand and slowly repositioned myself to the foot of our bed so that I could face the scorpion’s backside and not his menacing pincers and stinger. The creature turned with my every movement like he was riding a slow-motion, horror-film carousel. He positioned himself so that he was always staring directly into my face. When I was finally in striking position, Barb moved back 10 feet – just in case.

I raised the handle high and forcefully launched the broom towards the scorpion with adrenalin-spiked strength. It happened so quickly. The broom hit the mattress with tremendous force. I heard a loud snap. Initially, I was sure that the sound originated from my spine but then saw that the broom head had broken off and was hurtling through the air. I looked down but could not find the scorpion on my bed. I looked up again where I last saw the snaggy broom in flight, and the broken piece hit me square in the head. Dead center. Now I was bleeding – profusely. There was blood on the bed; blood on the ground; and blood all over me.

 

I cursed the idiot who manufactured the pillow-top mattress and wished him a special place in mattress hell. Through blurred, blood-filled eyes, I searched for the scorpion. But I saw nothing.

 

Then I heard another loud BANG where my wife stood just a few seconds earlier. Her right foot was perched in an awkward stance. She lifted her shoe and there he was – my nemesis, the scorpion. He had been flattened by her size 6 footwear. His armor-like body, hooked-shape weapon, and punitive pincers had been steamrolled by a flipflop.

 

No words were spoken. I limped to the bathroom and examined my wound in the mirror. The broom had not caused enough damage for stitches. In silence, I gathered supplies to clean up the bedroom’s bloodbath. Barb flushed the scorpion down the toilet. We changed the sheets but that could not alter my scorpion-themed dream pattern of the coming weeks.

 

The next morning, I went to work sporting a civil-war-style bandage on my forehead. People asked what happened.

I answered in one word: “Scorpion.”

 

Kevin Coleman: “I am a 60-year-old real estate lawyer in Florida who likes to write about the stupid stuff that has happened to me and my family. My goal is to one day assemble a collection and give them to my only daughter.”