Scorpion Sting and the Chicken Story

This post is part of the Cruel Kids, The Animals I Know and How to Neuter a Cow series.

I was going to write a paragraph about chickens, but to be honest, chickens always seemed boring to me. So let’s make it more interesting: let’s add a scorpion.

As a child, I often witnessed the use of folk medicines and natural remedies. Being one of the “Dennis the Menace” kids, I was frequently on the receiving end of these treatments. Somehow, it always ended up with someone chewing a bunch of grass, spitting on it, or worse, peeing on it, and applying it to the wound.

To be honest, I am still not convinced those treatments ever worked. But what could I say? They were older kids or adults, and I was just a small child. Looking back, I am pretty sure some people just wanted an excuse to put urine on others. Great. Now my childhood memories are ruined. Thanks, Reddit (or was it Obama?).

Houses in Việt Nam were not well sealed, since it was too hot to keep them shut tight. That meant plenty of critters, geckos, scorpions, and the occasional snake, roamed into bedrooms. Statistically speaking, the chance of getting stung by a scorpion in your sleep was high.

I remember seeing plenty of scorpions in and around our house. They were not huge, but their stings were among the most painful I have ever experienced.

I had firsthand experience with both scorpion and wasp stings. The swelling always became the butt of “ha-ha, your mama won’t recognize you” jokes.

If you happened to be allergic, like my mother, things got much worse. Rapid heartbeat, sweating, fever, and being knocked out for days.

According to some folk medicine, when stung by a scorpion, you should rub the anus of a chicken onto the sting to cancel out the poison. Let that sink in for a moment.

My mother was allergic to scorpion stings, and every time she was stung, she would be bedridden for three days. So we remembered those times well.

One hot summer night, we heard her scream from the back of the house. As we rushed toward her, we could already hear her hissing and muttering deliriously: “scorpion, scorpion!”

When we burst through the back door, the sight stopped us in our tracks. I could try to compare it to Tom Brady kicking a football, but that would not do it justice.

There she was, holding a chicken with both hands, trying to stick her big toe up its anus. A scorpion had stung her toe.

The poor chicken squawked for its life, wings flapping wildly, while our mother hyperventilated.

I can still hear that squawking as if it were yesterday. And that, my friends, is the story of the scorpion and the chicken.

Go back to the series index or continue to the next part: Pigs, Soccer and the Gigolo Boar Story (coming soon)