shoutout to the entomology grad students who worked at the insectorium in Costa Rica who abandoned all sense of liability and...
shoutout to the entomology grad students who worked at the insectorium in Costa Rica who abandoned all sense of liability and responsibility said “yeah, sure, go for it” when a teenage me asked if they’d help me get stung by a scorpion
in their defense, my parents were present and permitted it with a shrug, and this was before you could just queue up Brave Wilderness on your phone whenever you wanted to see some dumbass get envenomated
still though… if I allowed this at my nature center I’d absolutely get fired and possibly charged with something
what did it feel like though? i’ve long been curious about scorpion stings, but there are none in the area that i can go out and get stung by for research :(
Electric. An instant of shallow pinprick pain followed by a surge of dark, pulsating heat that traveled from the swell of my thumb all the way up my arm. My blood felt like it was simmering quietly under my skin and my whole hand quickly stiffened with mild muscle contractions, as though I had been gloveless in the bitter cold. My skin was very hot to the touch, pink and noticeably swollen, and remained so for about twenty minutes. I felt the dark internal heat inside my hand and wrist for another few hours, but it quickly stopped being painful and just felt heavy and strange. It was much less localized than a bee or a wasp sting–from the sensation alone, I couldn’t have pinpointed the exact location of the puncture; although I was stung at the base of my thumbnail and on my palm, it felt like a big wash of sensation all through my hand and wrist. The sharp brunt of the pain was over in under a minute and gave way to a deep throbbing soreness that gradually faded to neutral weirdness.
It was more intense than a paper wasp sting, but less annoying. Paper wasp stings feel very sharp and biting and more like injuries, but the scorpion sting was a much more full-bodied flavor profile.
Note: this was a harmless species, and done under the supervision of experts who could have gotten me an EpiPen if I had a bad reaction.
This sounds a lot like you did it because you wanted to write a character being stung by a scorpion and had to know how to depict it just right
I did it because I was 16 and had read about Justin Schmidt and because I’ve always been a freak for as long as I’ve existed.
The broader our base of experience is, the deeper our understanding of ourselves and the world, the greater our ability to discern and affect the outcomes we truly desire.
I’m sure it sounds Quixotic to draw a line between being stung by a scorpion and making the world a better place, but really, there’s nothing like novelty and extreme anchoring points to give us some real perspective.
