Don’t name your scorpion until you know for sure—哎呦，我被蝎子咬了

Certain bugs get my attention —especially poisonous ones, like scorpions.

I know something about scorpions, havingmade personal acquaintance with them when I lived in southern Arizona in theUnited States. So I perked up recently when I saw an article about scorpions inChina Daily.

In poverty-stricken Nongjing village,located in a remote part of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, residentshave found a novel way to raise their standard of living — by raisingscorpions.

It’s a success story for China, where thepoverty line is 2,300 yuan ($334) a year — and scorpion venom can bring afamily 2,000 to 3,000 yuan a month.

The venom has been used for centuries intraditional Chinese medicine to treat chronic pain, paralysis, internalbleeding and epilepsy. Scientists have identified dozens of promising proteinsin the Nongjing variety. Some have analgesic properties. Others areanti-microbial. Still others seem to act as muscle relaxants and anti-convulsants.Some appear to have anti-tumor properties that might be useful against cancer.

The life-span of these mini predators isabout 4 to 6 years — same as the yellow bark scorpions of southern Arizona.

Which brings me to Harold, the scorpion Inamed years ago.

I often worked late, returning home afterthe family was in bed. It was normal for my toddler son to curl up next to hismother and go to sleep. Nobody wore pajamas. Desert temperatures would plummetto 40 C.

And so one night I began my normalritual, wrapping my hands around my son’s little body to carry him to his ownbed, when suddenly …Wham!! Wham!!… a scorpion lurking beneath himstruck my finger twice.

There’s no word to express the exquisitepain — the worst I’ve ever experienced. It spread up my arm, causing swellingand numbness that would last for years. I yelled at my wife to take me to thehospital. She replied calmly: “What for? They can’t do anything; stop being ababy.” But I insisted. When I saw the doctor, he told me: “Sorry, there’snothing I can do.”

Anyway, before leaving the house, I hadheroically retrieved a glass jar and searched the bedding for the sneakyvillain. Obviously, it couldn’t be left to sting someone else. I saw himskittering toward a pillow and slammed the jar down. Gotcha!

I kept him in the jar for a long time andnamed him Harold. I planned to tell my son one day: “This is the scorpion Itook for you, buddy; remember this when I’m old.”

Weeks later, I thought even scorpionsmight get thirsty. So I kindly added a few drops of water to the jar. AndHarold promptly died. Oops.

I’m not sure I should have chosen thename Harold. For all I knew, he might have been female. Lan Tianting inGuangxi’s Nongjing village knows the difference. The 25-year-old has a singlejob at the scorpion farm — segregating female and male scorpions. I’m curious:Does he peek underneath or what?