brave and braver

Two nights ago, the food options were 1. rice. 2. fried fish. 3. fish in sauce. I chose instead option 4. cinnamon roll oatmeal, made possible by a lovely package that had just arrived. I went off to my room and returned with packet of oatmeal to announce, “There was a scorpion in my room.” The colleagues in the mess hall looked up from their meals.

“Really?”

“Yes.” I said, “really.”

“Did you kill it?”

“Of course.” I said. “I couldn’t allow it to LIVE, and probably sting me later.”

The truth is that it was a very small scorpion, sand-colored. I entered the room and we looked at each other for a while, neither sure what to do. I don’t like killing things unnecessarily, but as I looked at that stinger waving in the air, I thought it best to stomp on it a few times. It’s not like I could pick it up and escort it outside.

By the time I went to bed, ants were surrounding it, and by morning it was gone completely. No trace of the corpse remained. I know that I killed it good and dead, though, so I was forced to conclude that nature is weird. Either the ants or something else carried it off. There is definitely a mouse that shares my room with me, so perhaps it was she that ate the scorpion. I don’t know, but I know that I’m feeling all brave since I returned. Last night I actually – get this – went to the latrine in the middle of the night. That, my friends, is progress. When I arrived, I could barely go to the latrine at 8 p.m. when someone had just been in there, let alone 2 a.m. all alone.

And I killed a scorpion. Without screaming for help.

(An overexposed photo of my dead scorpion.)