Cockroaches, Scorpions and Snakes, Oh my....

It's Friday morning at 7:30 a.m. in the jungle of Belize. The real jungle. A river running outside my cabin, great vines hanging down from tropical trees hosting orchid-like succulents and long, fruit-bearing, Christmas-cactus-like pitaya vines. Cohune palm nuts fall, smacking into piles on the ground and, every time, I am glad I, or one of the dogs, am not under it. Parrots chatter (Loudly) in the tree tops, and a million other birds and insects cry out, though I cannot distinguish one from another. (Some insects make the most bird-like sounds.)

I look back now on how I used to think about things on, say, Wednesday. How cockroaches waking me up in the night crawling on me, sealed inside the mosquito netting with me, seemed so traumatic. How I sprayed the cabin frantically with the prevalent available toxins (which, it’s possible, I could not acquire in the US unless I were perhaps a scientist). How I slept in the fumes of it, calculating how much, if not all, of the battle against cancer that I had waged was now compromised by breathing neurotoxins in my sleep. (I’m not sure if I exaggerate.) How even in the morning roaches were still teetering and falling over - the fumes lasting that long. Ah, but that was Wednesday, a lifetime of lessons ago.

Somehow I could hear Eli's full body wag before I opened my eyes this morning. Something about the cadence of his paws dancing on the wood floor and the tags of his collar clinking off beat, and his puff of breath with the excitement of the wag. Also, the wide, wide, tongue-licking yawn and corresponding whine.

All of this comes at my first stirring in the morning. There's no stretching and repositioning for another 20 minutes of rest for me. Once body movement on the bed is perceived, I am, as far as the dogs are concerned, awake and it is Breakfast Time!

I heard the morning "I am here" growl of Guthrie at the side of the bed. Just a gentle growl deep in his throat that he uses when he thinks I have forgotten he is there. He considers it polite - compared to, say, a sharp bark (which he will use if I do not heed the gentle growl). He doesn't wag his whole body. He is not an energetic dog. But he will stamp his paws each once, wag his tail, and stretch his head up to see over the edge of the mattress with his little growl, watching attentively my closed eyes so at the first flutter of opening, I should see his big brown hound eyes first of all. And then he knows that I know that he exists and is ready for morning.

I smiled at the Gute and stretched in bed and looked up.

What? I had an instant of dismay while my eyes tried to focus on the dark shape on the mosquito netting above me. Not another cockroach... After all of my efforts.

As my eyes cleared, the creature crawled just a bit and stretched his tail and curled it back up and it was not the former worst-possible-sight-on-my-mosquito-net in the morning but a new worst. A big, black, hairy, long, scorpion dangling above my head in the morning light.

I whipped the mosquito netting aside and flew out of bed. I did not think to be thankful about the scorpion's many-legged grip on the net that kept him in place instead of just falling on me as I jostled the whole tent of net to Get Out.

The scorpion calmly kept his place on the net and continued his own morning stretch. I stood barefoot on the floor outside the bed breathing my alarm into hands cupped over my mouth.

Eli's body wag went into full motion with prancing and head bobs. He waggled by the door eager to get out, eager to eat. Elias has always been the most jubilant one about a new day. We could learn from him to be that eager every morning.

Guthrie is a sensitive dog. He stepped toward me from the door, watching me in earnest. Every dog hopes to be helpful and have a purpose. 

"Gute, it's a scorpion," I told him. And he perked his ears properly. Is she talking about  some kind of breakfast? he wondered.

Then I realized I was barefoot in a cabin full, on Wednesday (a lifetime of lessons ago), of cockroaches. I slid on my sandals, which waited by the bed, and I watched the scorpion. He really seemed to be waking up just like me. Little movements here and there. Hang his tail this way, hang his tail that way. Never poised to sting. No, he was just in the midst of his morning routine. Maybe he liked the sun coming through the window onto the net. Maybe he liked that the cockroaches were gone and he had the place to himself. (Or, alternately, maybe he eats cockroaches and I should have mixed feelings about wanting him to go.)

Fabio taught me regard for scorpions and tarantulas. The first scorpion we saw at my house in the milder jungle of Kontiki was an amazing specimen. It was not ugly and terrorizing or scrawny and skittling in a manner that makes humans feel they are outmatched for speed and maneuverability; it was beautiful and jet black and it marched into the house confidently and slowly, into the middle of the kitchen floor while we were playing a game of scrabble.

“Fabio!” I said with alarm.

“Look at that!” he said with amazement.

“Fabio!” I repeated with alarm.

He was heading over to examine it. I remember he looked at me as though I was missing the point.

"Look at it Susan. It is beautiful."

“Fabio!” I said uncertainly. He was right, and yet - wasn't he too close to it, wouldn't he get stung, and if we don't catch it instantly, won't it scurry away and lay in wait to sting me later...?!

"Let me look at it." he said. And he studied it and he was not afraid it would strike. Then he gently used a container to pick it up and looked at it some more. I think he asked me if I wanted to look at it some more. I think I said no. And he took it outdoors to the jungle and transplanted it there.

I am thankful that was my introduction to scorpions. (I also may, in the retelling of this story, be Downplaying my actual alarm at the time. Writer’s license.) I have seen others since then, of the creepy kind and translucent-y brown/tan, somehow that coloring is the very worst for creepiness. But with Fabio's example, he gave me courage to see past the fear to the Majesty of the thing. God's amazing intricacy and architecture in His creation. I will never forget that first scorpion, and Fabio’s awe, and me developing a smidgen of awe that later grew. I won't forget to have awe about God's amazing assortment of creatures.

It doesn't mean it was easy for me the next time one was in my house.

"Just use a broom and sweep it toward the door, it will not run at you," Fabio said in a sleepy voice. I had woken him at midnight in alarm. I thought it was a crumpled black candy wrapper on the floor and I almost picked it up and then I thought, I don't have any candy in the house, certainly not those black wrapped Halloween taffys. What could that be? So I took a broom to sweep it up and the crumpled wrapper Expanded and Puffed itself up into a full-on scorpion and I freaked, using a certain amount of vibrato.

It was another of the jet-black, stunning variety but not as big, and not slow moving like the first one, but rather completely still as though dead and then darting, and it wasn't as beautiful without Fabio there.

Fabio is right about a lot of things, most things, but not the part about "it won't run at you" That's exactly what it did when I tried to nudge it with the broom, to go around and out the laundry room door, so we need not be in so tight a space that my anxiety easily filled it. Instead it ran toward me and I think that's how I ended up sitting on top of the clothes washer, broom in hand, with my vibrato piercing Fabio's sleeping ear.

In the scorpion's defense, his attacker was the blue, prickly-bristled, broom head moving toward him. His aversion of the broom was not the waging of an attack on me. Still, he, perhaps without malice, made a beeline for me and my feet.

Fabio gave me the strategy of sweeping it into an empty box and carrying it outside for him to see the next day. (Someone else could have squished it, but I have a personal limit on the size of bug I am willing to squish. This exceeded my limit. That and what if it was resilient and didn't squish as I expected and instead weaseled out from under my sandal and over my foot or - God forbid - up my calf. That is the real fear. )

I am already blocking out the image of the scorpion this morning. Was it black like those first ones? Yes, I think so. It was skinnier though and like a little machine put together in segments. A little bit hairy but not so hairy I could not see the segments. Don't worry, I took pictures.

I stood in the cabin, now in my sandals, Guthrie midway between me and the door, his earnest look, assessing my non-breakfast related movements. Eli waggling and waggling and then even Eli stopped. He scanned the room for the problem. They both were quiet trying to perceive the danger I was perceiving.

No, nothing, Eli decided, and re-wagged and head bobbed and gave me the snout-lick morning yawn from the door. It's breakfast-morning time!!

I scanned the room for a Container in which to capture the scorpion, and then looked back to make sure he was still there. He had not dropped to the bed among the pillows to create any kind of Situation or chase scene. No, he was enjoying the morning on My Side of the mosquito net.

I thought of the small quart bucket on the front porch table holding limes and garlic. That was large enough for his whole length without me needing special maneuvering strategies, like putting him one end first into a jar because it was too narrow. I was interested only in simplicity and ease on my part.

I let the pups out and emptied the bucket of its garlic and found a flimsy plastic cutting board piece that would cover the whole top of the bucket. I took a photo of him for posterity and then, to my own surprise, reached easily inside the mosquito netting surround and covered him with the bucket.

The matter about insects is their speed and suddenness of movement. He had none of that, so I did not have to scream. He moved a little at the sudden movement of his net but simply hung on to his morning perch. (This is the point at which I thought to be thankful for his many-legged grip on the net and how he hadn’t fallen onto me, my face, or the pillows.)

Instead of picking him off the inside of the net with the piece of hard plastic to drop him into the bucket, at which activity he may bolt and then I would have to scream, I instead put the plastic on the outside of the net so he was enclosed without knowing it, his mosquito netting platform between the bucket and the plastic. Then I shook the whole apparatus a little and tapped on the plastic and he tried to run but no, my plastic shield was tight to the lid of the bucket. Thus, I did not have to scream. He dropped into the bucket, which was transparent, and I quickly capped it with the plastic piece, sans netting, and took him to the porch.

My heart was pounding. This was my jungle cardio workout. I called Fabio.

“Do you want me to save it for you to look at?” I wondered. He wanted to the last time I captured a scorpion. He finds it fascinating.

No. "I would set it free in the yard," he said, "but you do whatever you want to with it."

He wondered, I think, if I would spray it with my new neurotoxin miracle roach spray, I think. No. That can was long gone. Used the whole thing the Wednesday of the cockroaches. This was Friday after all. (A lifetime of lessons hence.) New day, new pest control system. I walked the bucket across the furthest part of the yard to the jungle. I had the camera on my wrist and was thinking of simply laying the bucket on its side and letting him crawl out back into the wild and taking another picture but I somehow instead (remembering he Could come at me again, once on solid ground, and crawl across my foot or, again, God forbid, up my shin) flung him out of the bucket into the air, into the deep of the jungle.

I do not live in the rainforest exactly. I think that is further south than Belize. This is tropical jungle. (And I don’t know the exact difference.) But still it is rife with insects, bugs, and creatures so numerous (millions) that they have never been even been cataloged. We have no names for them. I am living among creatures unknown to man. How is it I have ONLY had a cabin full of cockroaches and one single scorpion? That should probably be my question. But that is Friday's wisdom. Wednesday I was in tears over the terror of cockroaches and could not have heard it. By Friday I handled a scorpion without incident (a racing heart but, as mentioned, no scream).

A few days before I came, the little black kitten, with white paws, is said to have taken down a fer-de-lance (poisonous snake). I can't even comprehend that. I thought a kitten would be lunch for such a snake.

No, the black-bearded neighbor who lives in the second story of the guest house on the property, above the yellow-orange former resort office where I am allowed to keep my computer and have the best wireless signal yet in Belize, testified that each time the snake went to strike the cat struck first. After 50 strikes, was his estimate, the snake was dead.

I am thankful for two things about this. One, the little black cat, with white paws, is friendly toward me. Two, he killed the fer-de-lance so at least I don't need to worry about snakes.... Well…

Living the jungle adventure,

Susanna