Oaxaca Bugs
We arrived in Oaxaca, Mexico on the 14th of January. It was about 8:00 pm when we arrived and we had to take a taxi to the house. The driver told us it would take about 30 minutes to get to the house. Me and Isla were already tired so I can’t really remember the drive all that well. When we pulled into the driveway the gate was locked so we had to wait for the man who was renting the house to us to come out and let us in. Sergio (the man renting the house to us) showed the house to us and then he left to go to his house, which was right next door. After Sergio left, we were sitting at the dining room table trying to put enough snacks together to eat for dinner (there wasn’t any food in the house yet) when my mom saw something. She was trying to signal to my dad without me noticing (I was already upset, because I missed home and Mexico can sometimes be unnerving at night). The way she did this was by staring straight at the thing she was trying to get my dad to notice. Unfortunately, I followed her gaze and saw a HUGE spider on the wall across the room. I broke down COMPLETELY! Isla then found another HUGE spider on the wall right behind us. Isla didn’t know that my mom didn’t want me to see the spiders, but she announced it loud and clear! I was a complete wreck! Mom helped me into bed because I was so upset. I was out like a light!
The next day we decided to check out our little Village, San Felipe del Agua. I had another hard night, but it was not caused by an insect this time. I was still really tired and home sick.
On the third night, I saw a huge scorpion IN THE HALLWAY NEAR THE DOOR OF OUR ROOM!!!!!! I watched it crawl under the door to the outside deck just as the rest of my family came to see the scorpion. I had yelled “SCORPION” really loud!!!! My mom was upstairs and she came flying down the stairs. They all said, “Where is it”? I pointed to the other side of the door (it was glass) where the scorpion was crawling to freedom. Well actually it was crawling to free-doom because my mom was the only one with shoes on and my dad said, “step on it”. When she did this she said “yuck” because if you had to step on a scorpion it would be pretty gross for you too!! Just as she was about to step on it, I thought the scorpion looked a little smaller than it did when I saw it in the house. I got my answer a moment later because I saw ANOTHER scorpion crawl out right after it. This was the one I had seen IN the house!
The first scorpion - this wasn’t even the biggest!
I had trouble sleeping that night (most people would) after all I had been the one to find BOTH scorpions! One of my biggest fears is having a spider or scorpion in my bed, so I was really worried that it might happen. That night I went up to my parent’s bedroom, with shoes on (of course). Since I didn’t have a flashlight, I turned my Kindle light on as high as it would go. I ran as fast as I could run, in the dark, in the middle of the night, with potential scorpions on the ground! I woke my dad up and told him I was contemplating the color white. Now if you are wondering why I was contemplating the color white, it was because thinking of the color white usually puts me to sleep. I climbed into their bed and immediately fell asleep.
I woke up in my mom and dad’s bed at three in the morning and couldn’t go back to sleep. I went downstairs to my bedroom. My dad had moved to my bed. There wasn’t much room for me, so I laid down on the foot of the bed curled up in a tight ball. I laid there for about 10 minutes and then decided to lie in a little sliver next to him. I woke him up trying to do this and he scooted over to make room for me. We slept there together for the rest of the night.
Here’s the way this scorpion business was affecting my dad. He would wake up in the middle of the night with a flashlight and check the whole house to see if there were any scorpions. He would also check the entire house every time we came back to the house after being out. It was no fun of course, but it was what had to be done. Two day’s later my dad talked to the owner, and the owner said that he would have some scorpion stuff sprayed to keep them away. Even though he sprayed, we found 7 more scorpions!! We ended up naming the Spiders Moe and Coe and then a third one, Joe
A few weeks later, my mom was in the bathroom and a scorpion must have decided that he wanted to try out for gymnastics or something because he flipped off the ceiling and landed on her shoulder!!! As you can imagine, she freaked out! Then, when I was looking through some books on the shelf, I found a dead scorpion. Even though there were a lot of scorpions and insects Oaxaca was great! It was just disappointing to have to meet so many scorpions and bugs along the way.
