Thursday, November 08, 2007

Black Scorpion

Only this week I had told my helper at Bosque Santa Lucia, Cleuson Teixeira, to call me if he found a scorpion. As I remember it, the subject came up because he told me that he found a scorpion in the reception center while moving some furniture around to paint the walls. Well, so luck would have it, today he discovered another one under a board he had picked up next to the old outdoor toilette. He quickly came back to the reception center to let me know of the find. If I hadn't had the help of Cleuson in recapturing the critter every few seconds, I'd never have gotten a picture. As it was, I must have taken more than 20 pictures because it wouldn't sit still for a second, unless it was hidden from our sight. Delete, delete and delete, hoping that at least one shot might be acceptable. I ended up with two images worth keeping, so I was happy as a fly on ... you know what. Cleuson was quite firm in keeping his distance from the scorpion .. and with good reason. His father, Raimundo Teixeira, was stung by one of these creatures about three years ago when he was cleaning a trail at the Bosque. I was there at the time, so we headed off to the Santarem Hospital as fast as I dared drive. The hospital is only 19 kilometers from the Bosque but about half way, Teixeira went into shock. He was given several injections of medicine at the hospital at about 11:00 AM. It was almost midnight when he came out of the anaphylaxic shock!! That was proof that the black scorpion is one more dangerous critter. Look at the size of the stinger on this one. Click on the image for a better view.

2 comments:

GingerV said...

good photo!
I suppose that if it were outside the outhouse no one has to worry about going into the outhouse. can you give information to about what size he was - 2 inches?
gingerv

Anonymous said...

Wow, that's a pretty potent scorpion. We have scorpions here in Hawaii, too, but the sting is not much different (in pain or effect) than a bee sting. Except to people who are allergic, they are more nuisance than anything.

The ones here are like yours, though, in that they are next to impossible to photograph alive.