I stared and blinked for half a minute, trying fathom it.
I had no point of reference for the thing, which lay motionless and curiously alien upon the bedroom tiles. I traced my eyes over its blackened thorax, its flattened tail, its claws and its spidery limbs – all hideously contracted and unlike anything I had ever seen.
But at last, I recognised it.
“Jennifer,” I bellowed. “Get in here now. There’s something big in the room!”
Jennifer was showering, blissfully oblivious to this grim new development. Indeed, the true horror of our predicament had not yet fully unfolded for either of us – worse, much worse, was still to come.
“I can’t hear you,” she called back.
“There’s a scorpion in the room!” I cried. “Get in here now!”
“What? I can’t hear you.”
“Turn off the water!” I screamed. “Just turn off the water and get in here!”
The creature did not move. Beside it lay a large pile of dirty laundry which it had evidently commandeered as an impromptu nest.
Our dirty t-shirts, socks and other sweat-soiled articles had been an irresistible lure for the beast, who had simply wandered inside in search of warmth, darkness and a place to sleep. We had, inadvertently, invited it.
Jennifer entered the room with a towel wrapped around her waist, enquiring as to the problem. When I pointed out the unwelcome guest, her face dropped in an exclamation of pure, naked outrage. Still, the scorpion did not move.
We drew up close and examined it, placing an empty plastic box over it, just to be safe. All at once the creature sprang to life, scuttled wildly with tail raised, claws extended, clattering to and fro within the confines of its prison.
“Oh no,” I groaned. “It’s alive. What are we going to do? I can’t kill it. Can you imagine the crunch?”
“I know, I know,” said Jennifer. And then: “Hey, what’s that white stuff on its back?”
“I don’t know. It looks like pocket lint to me.”
“Pocket lint? From where?”
“Your jeans,” I said. “You lifted them from the floor right before you took a shower. It must have fallen out of your pocket.”
She stared at me pointedly before releasing a minor torrent of expletives.
“My jeans?! Oh my fucking god, I don’t believe it, I was going I was going to put them on after my shower.”
There was a moment, a grim moment, as a heinous new possibility began to dawn: What if there were more of them?
Jennifer lifted her jeans from the bed and shook them. One, two, three shakes later and a tiny scorpling – no more than an inch big – dropped to the tiles and scuttled for cover.
“A baby! Can you see it? Can you see it?”
I grabbed a glass of water from the side cabinet, emptied the contents and up-ended it, squarely trapping the offensive offspring. There was more silence. A dreadful, relentless, pit of silence.
Slowly, carefully, we put on our shoes, a clean set of clothes, and retreated to the kitchen to consult the internet.
Our research quickly yielded heart-breaking news. Our unwelcome friends were a variety of brown bark scorpion – not lethal to adults, but nasty, sneaky, quick to move and extremely painful to sting.
And young scorplings, we learned, are as venomous as fully grown scorpions.
For the crusty white substance on the mother’s back that I had erroneously taken for pocket lint was actually the residual remains of embryonic sacks. To complete our horror, we learned that a single brood can yield eight to one hundred scorplings.
My head began to throb. Not only had a highly poisonous night-crawler taken up residence in our bedroom, it had given birth there and established a nursery. Now its monstrous little children – up to a hundred of them –were running wild through our belongings.
We took a moment to collect ourselves. Nothing less than a highly organised clean-up operation was in order. A systematic obliteration of the pestilent intruders. A scorpion death squad, no less.
The door to the bedroom creaked open slowly. It was awash with mess – chaotically strewn articles of clothing, books, backpacks, plastic bags, paperwork and towels – all potential hiding places.
We set to work, carefully shaking and examining each item, smoking out the creatures and trapping them under up-turned cups, glasses and bowls. Under the hot, humid, unrelenting close Nicaraguan night, we began to sweat – deep, hellish, waterfalls of sweat.
It took us three hours to clear and check them room. An array of upturned vessels littered the floor like a deadly minefield. We’d captured and counted some 19 scorplings – a modest brood – and soon set about murdering them with tip of a machete, one by one, as mother watched distraught from her tuppawear box.
Our bedroom was no longer a place of rest and sanctuary, but a killing field. The corpses of broken, half-crushed scorpions littered the floor. And we attended to the slaughter with a morose efficiency, sweeping the remains into a careful little pile.
Finally the children were gone and only mother remained. Neither of us possessed the brutal instincts to kill such a large creature. Having transferred her to a green bucket, she was now entirely under our control. And we took pity on her.
“Let’s take her to that dirty little stream around the corner and release her.” I said. “There’s lots of bushes and rocks out there. She’ll like it. She can start again. She can raise a new family.”
So we hauled the bucket outside, neighbours eyeing us suspiciously from their rocking chairs and porches. Before long we caught the attention of a group of macho men.
“What you have there?” They enquired, peering inside. “Ah. Escorpio!”
Fearlessly, one of the machos thrust his hand into the bucket, flicked out a concealed knife and set to work. A sharp crunch resounded as he severed the sting from mother’s tail. There were smiles all around as he lifted up the now impotent creature and let it to crawl up and down his arm like a kitten.
“You wanna hold it?” He asked, thrusting it in my face.
“No, no, no, no, no.” I cried, as the machos looked on with barely veiled contempt.
We left the scene and returned home with an empty bucket. We sat down in the kitchen chairs, silent and drained, and watched as a small mouse ran across the kitchen floor. We didn’t speak or move or even acknowledge the intrusion. Enough was enough. Time to call it a night.
