Milking Scorpions

by Pa Rock
Desert Rat

It was a warm and toasty 107 degrees in the Valley of Hell both yesterday and today. If the current trend continues, it could really get hot by August! Isn't fire also a dry heat?

I read a piece in one of the local rags about a guy who makes a living "milking" scorpions and selected varieties of spiders. The product is used in manufacturing "anti-venoms" and other scientific endeavors. (Colonel Mustard in the library with scorpion venom, anyone?)

Apparently there are two methods for collecting the venom. One involves placing cellophane over a receptacle and the letting the scorpion (or whatever) sting the film. The second method involves strapping the little bugger into some type of restraint, connecting suction tubes, and then stimulating him with an electric shock. Apparently method number two is much more reliable and really gets the old juices flowing!

I have no interest in becoming a scorpion milker, but I know for a fact that I could catch them. Been there, done that. I also milked one, just not in a way that preserved the venom! There are scorpions under most rocks in this cruel desert. Just flip them over and scoop the little bastards up in a paper cup and deposit them in a minnow bucket or some ventilated container. Nothing to it - until you get to the rock that is keeping Brother Rattler cool! That's when it gets interesting!

But the desert is not all hell-on-earth and venom - the sunsets are amazing!

Another Desert Menace

by Pa Rock
Macho Muchacho

The local news media reported that four people in the Phoenix area were bitten by rattlesnakes last weekend. One was a child who didn't know enough to back away. Another was a fellow who stepped off of his porch and was bitten on the heel by a rattler who was snoozing in the shade and awoke just as he was about to be stepped on. A local hospital reported that one man was bitten on the hand after he tried to pet a rattlesnake. It was discovered, to the surprise of no one, that he had been drinking prior to the incident. (Doctors at that same hospital stated that they had previously encountered people who were bitten as they had tried to kiss a rattlesnake. I wonder what drugs they were taking?)

Local doctors gave the press some pointers about snake bites to share with the public. They said not to use a tourniquet to impede the blood flow, not to cut into the bite and try to suction out the poison, and definitely not to catch the snake and bring it to the hospital. Treating the snake bite does not require the presence of the snake.

Some of my co-workers feel that snakes pose no serious threat to those of us residing within the city limits, but I know better. It's all desert. It's their home, and we are the intruders. This week I saw a roadrunner speed across the intersection of Litchfield and McDowell - a very busy place. (The roadrunner made it safely across the intersection, but the coyote who was chasing him was hit by five cars, a fat kid on a skateboard, and an anvil falling from the sky!) I know for certain that the scorpions don't turn around at the city limits sign, and I'm doubtful that the rattlers do either.

I think that being stung by a scorpion (3 times!) has hardened me as a desert dweller. That hurt more than anything I have ever encountered in life - and I lived to tell the tale. The guy who survives a scorpion probably has little to fear from a rattler. If some of those bad boys slither over my way, I may just wind up with a new pair of boots!

We're Having a Heat Wave...a damned desert heat wave!

by Pa Rock
Survivor

Arizona is supposed to have another three or four weeks of pleasant weather before the insufferable summer heat sets in, but Mother Nature has a penchant for unpredictability. Yesterday the temperature in the Valley of Hell hit a roasty-toasty 102 degrees! This August when the daily highs will be on the uncomfortable side of 110 or even 115 degrees, me and all of the other desert varmints will undoubtedly look back on the current heat levels with a degree of longing – but for the time being, firmly anchored in the here-and-now, it’s hot – damned hot!

I know how things work, even the weather, and while it may sound a tad cynical, it is not coincidental that that this heat wave hit at the same time that I am moving, carload by carload, from one hovel to another. It is the predictable result of global warming brought on by the corporate excesses of the Bush administration, planned and implemented over the course of many years with the primary aim of giving me heatstroke as I run my little convertible up and down Litchfield Road with the top down while moving my book cases, floor lamps, and yard art!

That’s right, Cheney! I know this sudden heat wave is all your evil doing. Somewhere there is a CIA memo covering the elimination of Pa Rock by scorpions or sunstroke, and when that memo surfaces, there’s going to be hell to pay! The scorpion died, but I’m still here – and the Arizona sun is making me tougher than an old boot. So, you bald, beady-eyed buzzard, bring on your sinister machinations. I will defeat them all! I’m a survivor!

And I’m mad…damned mad…and getting madder! It must be the heat!

Pa Rock's Big Adventure

by Pa Rock
Newly Initiated Desert Dweller

It happened in the middle of the night. I was sleeping peacefully last night when I suddenly sensed a fly scurrying across my exposed leg. I awoke just enough to reach down and brush the pest away, but when I made contact with the nocturnal tourist, he immediately sank his stinger into my thigh. Even in the fog of sleep, I knew that I had just gotten up close and personal with Arizona's state night terror, the desert scorpion! I must have knocked him into the sheet because by the time I wrestled my way to freedom, I had been stung two more times.

I jumped out of bed and hit the lights. The evil creature was walking slowly across the top sheet, seemingly unperturbed and quite nonchalant. I bundled him into the sheet and squeezed twice - for all I was worth. Each time when I unwadded the sheet, my attacker would resume his leisurely stroll across my bed. I finally got an empty pill bottle and scooped him up. He is still residing in that red plastic bottle and is hopefully getting some sense of what bug hell is really like!

The next thing that I did was to fire up the computer and google scorpion stings. A generic article told me that a scorpion sting would hurt (duh!) and that I could die, but probably wouldn't. I read up on all of the symptoms to worry about, and then spent an hour surfing the iTunes store while waiting to see what turn my injuries would take. My plan was to head to the ER if I started to get deathly ill, and take along my captive so that they could see exactly what I dealing with. I didn't die, and finally I crawled back into bed (after checking it very carefully), for a couple of hours of fitful sleep before heading into work.

The stings still hurt. They are very similar to those I experienced many years ago when I mowed over an underground nest of yellow jackets. One friend (a nurse) told me that I should have treated the stings with ammonia. (How many bachelors have ammonia in their homes - or have any clue as to its uses?)

Another friend who has lived in the desert for years, but has never made physical contact with a scorpion, told me that a friend told her that on a scale of one to five, with one being the least painful - wasps are a one, scorpions are a three, and fire ants are a five. If that's true, and I have no reason to believe that it isn't, I never want to go anywhere near a pissed-off fire ant!

Goodnight...sleep tight...and don't let the bed bugs bite!

But It's a Dry Heat!

by Pa Rock
Itinerant Weatherman

Yesterday, the 19th of May in the year 2008, the temperature in Goodyear, Arizona, reached 113 degrees! In Phoenix proper the high was a more modest 110 degrees. The record high temperature in Phoenix for the 19th of May had been 105 degrees - and that mark was set last year! Today, in the early afternoon, it was 105 degrees here, and getting hotter! Dear Leader may say there is no such thing as global warming, but he has Crawford crap oozing out of his jug ears. Global warming is the real deal!

Yes, I knew when I moved to the desert that it would be hot. I expected to spend a couple of months each year suffering under the unrelenting sun. Those months that I expected to suffer were July and August. Nobody told me that I would be able to fry steak and eggs on the sidewalk in the middle of spring!

When God, in Her infinite wisdom, made the Valley of the Sun, I think She saw it strictly as being a playground for scorpions and Gila monsters. Surely She could have had no inkling that Man would be so masochistic (or dumb) as to try and live in the foyer of Hell.

I'd bitch some more, but it's too damned hot!