My First Scorpion Bite

Cleaning up on our last day...Maura has been after me our whole trip to be more cautious in the desert mainly around the wearing of shoes. "There's scorpions that will get you, you don't know what will happen if you get bit." Well I finally found out...while wearing shoes.

Cleaning up an old tarp that I had used to do some dieseling of the wood deck, I was lifting the diesel soaked sand on the tarp into a wheel barrow to be used for, you guessed it, scorpion protection, when a rather large scorpion fell off the tarp and landed between my sandal and my rather large arch of my foot. I felt a burning on my foot and looked down to see the tail of the scorpion (about an inch and a half) wiggling around trapped between my foot and my sandal. I don't know if you have ever tried to get webbed sandals off in a hurry. They are designed to stick to your feet in all sort of adverse situations. Neither I nor the scorpion were happy with the design at that particular moment.

Maura came running as the language I was to describe the sandal design was graphic, similar to when I hit my thumb with my hammer.

I stayed calm, went into the shade by the water spout, washed off my feet. I asked for some anti-infamatories. Maura brought ice, one of her anti-histamines and a shot of tequila.

I asked her to take some photos to record the effect of a scorpion bite. Can you tell which one is faked?