Carmine creepy crawlies

Twelve degrees at 9am. Overcast, with the not-so-distant Alps at the top end of the lake obscured in autumn mist once more. Rain on its way.

In India, too many years ago, I once stayed with an ageing couple whose only sanitation was a breeze block khazi plastered with cow dung. The mechanism was fairly primitive, involving as it did a metal cup of water and the active participation of one very large, very pregnant pink pig (and later her eight piglets).

I very quickly got used to the pig, and eventually felt for her an affection born of enforced intimacy, but something I couldn't ever quite get used to about this particular toilet experience was the presence of dozens of small, almost transparent scorpions on the walls of the khazi.

The inside walls.

About four inches from me. On all sides. In the depths of night, with only a kerosene lamp for guidance.

In order to stem the rising creepy-crawly hysteria at toilet time, I would venture outside with a nod to the pig, chanting inside my head the words, "When a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do, the girl's gotta do it." And so I did. Do it. In the full knowledge that just one of these little critters could put me in hospital. Or worse.
So it should come as no surprise to my husband and family (although it does seem to) that I have no problem with the latest infestation to hit our house.

You guessed it.

It seems to be scorpion season in Carmine. I'm evicting an average of two a day, using the old glass-and-postcard method. They're everywhere : feigning dead under the firewood, clawing their way up the curtains, dawdling in the door jambs. I even found one doing a surprisingly accomplished front crawl in the washing-up water the other day.

None in my boots. As yet.


But these are not the tiny transparent demons that will give you a nasty that sends you into the netherworld. These are 'orrible big fellas of about one inch plus, and they're black as coal and lazy to boot. And contrary to what you'd think, I'm told that their sting is on a par with the humble wasp.
No problem.
Oh, but there is a problem. When I've got them in my upturned glass, hemmed in with a postcard of printmaker Colin Moore's limited edition linoprint 'Sandend', what then? Where do I put them?
Well, that's for me to know and you to find out. All I can say, people, is ... be very, very nice to me...

Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008. All rights reserved. Please ask first.