A True Story!

While other women are totally occupied with plans for the summer holidays , shopping, or redecorating ……I’m sitting at the breakfast table (at 9:45 AM), sipping my hot tea and thinking about the time I killed a scorpion. Yes, I, not David, killed a household bug. I’m still proud.

It was a lot of years ago in Dallas and in the evening. David was at a meeting and all three kids were asleep in bed. Ahhhh! My time to enjoy a TV show of my choice.

However, my special time was interrupted when I noticed a big scorpion slowly walking across the living room floor directly in front of me. Horrors! For a few minutes I watched it make its slow progress. I knew that having my feet up on the sofa and ignoring it was not a solution. I had to kill it…..before it got away. Me? Double horrors! But I reasoned I had three little children, 4,2 and 1 to think about. What if the scorpion got away only to appear again among the Lincoln Logs as they played the next day?

After forever, I made my move. I rolled up a newspaper, slowly crept off the sofa, on the scorpion’s blind side, whacked it really hard, left the newspaper on top of it and jumped back on the sofa. Time passed as I fully expected it to come calmly walking out from under the newspaper, totally unhurt.

After another forever, I mustered the courage to move the newspaper. I had to know. Yay!  It was dead.  I had saved my children! I’m brave after all!

Finally I went back to enjoying my TV show when I noticed another movement on the floor in front of me near our fireplace. A big beetle was slowly walking across the floor right in front of me, heading toward the scorpion road-kill. He assessed the situation, then calmly broke off a piece of the scorpion, turned around and took it back to the fireplace where it had been hiding watching me being brave.

Over and over the beetle patiently walked to the scorpion, got a piece,and took it back to its lair. Back and forth, back and forth. I’ve often wondered if the beetle had planned the whole thing. I’ll never know. Now there was nothing left for David to clean up when he got home.

Good beetle!

P.S. I’ve been doing art things for a lot of years, but I think this is the first time I’ve ever sketched a scorpion or a beetle.