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Sometimes, you just want to curl up in bed. We were already grappling with the realization that the J, which we rely on so much in summer, was a lot less safe than it used to be -- having a Tucson police officer patrolling the place at all times is a good idea, but underscores the problem -- when the floods came. A number of washed-out highways later, things calmed down enough for us to feel like life was getting back to normal when a speeding drunk driver nearly killed our daughter in our small, tract-home subdivision. The adrenaline from that threat still has our hearts racing triple time. And now I just saw the cats exhibiting suspiciously alert behavior near the front door and walked over to see that, yes, there was indeed a bark scorpion -- the worst kind we have in Arizona -- walking along the wall.
This time I didn't hesitate. I picked up Kim's troublingly soft-heeled clog and pushed it down and around until I saw scorpion juice spurt out over the tile. Smokey was a little too into the chase for me to risk leaving things to chance. Now she and Thing Two are lifting the welcome mat to see whether they can find the object of their stalking, which I have already flushed down the toilet. The only problem is that, as I was sliding it off the sole with a piece of toilet paper, it made one of those involuntary death movements that primitive creatures make and seemed to brush against my finger. I 'm almost certain I came to no harm, but my whole body is tingling in an eery manner anyway. Damn. I'm sure a swarm of killer bees displaced from their riverbed home will be next. Either that or a rattlesnake. Or maybe a White Supremacist tweaker. The possible threats are many.
