Thursday, August 16, 2007

Just when you thought it was safe...




As Thai Mother’s Day was on a Sunday, I didn’t have to go to work on Monday. I decided to spend the day doing laundry. I had about 3 weeks saved up because I hate doing it (it takes forever, it is hard, it is hot, and it takes 3 days for your clothes to dry). I did a load in the morning then ate lunch and read for a bit and had just started another load when there was a knock on my door.

It was the two ladies that had come over asking me to “help” with their English homework. They wanted some more help. As I had just started the wash, I asked them if they could come back in an hour as I was doing laundry. When they left, I hurried & got a really large load of wash done.

Now, as I have mentioned previously, we are in the middle of the rainy season, and even though it is not raining as much as it normally does (I’m told that it usually pours in sheets of rain), it still rains quite a bit…so I have strung up a line in my kitchen to hang my clothes to dry (and I will place a fan in front of it so that they dry faster). Well, I was in the process of hanging my clothes when the rope breaks and all of my clean clothes fall to the floor. Luckily they didn’t get dirty so I looked outside to see if I could hang them out there, and it was cloudy & looked like rain. So I retied my rope (it was just quite a bit shorter) and started re-hanging them when the rope breaks again! (Now remember the ladies were coming back in an hour). I had no choice…I had to hang my clothes outside to dry…and if it rained…well, my clothes would still be wet.

The ladies showed up a few minutes after I finished hanging my clothes up to dry (for the third time). While I “helped” them with their homework, they were snooping through my house, looking through my books, looking at my pictures. They stayed for about an hour (it was about 4:30 when they left) and I did some more cleaning until there was another knock on my door. One of the ladies had come back and brought me food! She brought sticky rice & some sausages…which I had for dinner & it was delicious.

When it started to get dark (about 7:00) I went outside to get my clothes…and they were still wet. So I had all of these wet clothes and nowhere to hang them! I looked around my yard, and saw this really long bamboo pole that the Thais use to get papayas out of the tree…it took it inside & propped it up on some boards in my house and hung my clothes from the bamboo pole (I was so proud of myself) then I stuck the fan in front for it to dry faster.

I usually take a shower at 9:00 (when it is this hot you need two showers a day), then turn out all of the lights in the house, and sit in my room and read…and Monday night was no different until I realized that I forgot to put my soda in the fridge. Now ever since reading that scorpions were nocturnal, I have been terrified of walking around my house in the dark. If I have to go anywhere, I grab a flashlight and turn lights on as I go. When I got back to my room, I went to shut the door and saw a scorpion sitting in my doorway. It looked odd…like it had already been smashed so I watched it for a few minutes until I noticed its tail moving. I looked around my room for something to smash it with and only saw books…so I grabbed an empty box and tried to smash it with that but it wasn’t heavy enough & it ran away. And that is when I saw the babies running around! (Scorpions carry their babies on their backs & that is why it looked “odd”). I killed 3 babies but still could not find the adult.


So I would go back and forth between jumping up on my bed and then back to the door to look for more scorpions (I knew I wasn't going to get any sleep without killing the big one). I finally found the adult sitting in the corner of my room...and what was the first thing I did? I grabbed my camera of course!
The "momma" scorpion.
The dead "momma" scorpion.

One of the baby scorpions.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You killed a momma scorpionon Mother's Day? That can't be good!
Lisa