JudyJB wrote:. . .about an hour later my ankle started to itch and get red. Then it really started to sting and burn--really painfully.
I was suspecting a tick or some other bug that I react to, but he suggested a scorpion!
I lived in a small community - just barely a "town" - in the lower Sierra foothills north-east of Sacramento (by a good amount of distance) for nearly thirty years.
One day (when I had already lived at my place for about twenty years) I was "out back" with my wheelbarrow picking up largish rocks to use to put around the perimeter of a rudimentary flower garden I had at the front of my house. Not wearing gloves, of course.
I suddenly felt a sudden sting on my hand (kind of like an ant sting) and, looking down, saw a tiny black - something - about the length of my thumbnail there on the ground where my hand had been. For a second I couldn't figure out what it was, then I realized it was a tiny scorpion! I was pretty surprised (shocked is the word) as I had never seen a scorpion on my place before, and since the winters there were somewhat cold (we would get snow sometimes) I didn't think a scorpion could exist there.
Well, I was about thirty miles from the nearest doctor so went into the house to call to see what I should do. Instant alarm!! I was advised to immediately get into my car and head for the emergency room, without fail! Might be life or death! I thanked the technician and hung up. The sting didn't even hurt anymore by this time, so I thought about the sixty-mile-round-trip to the emergency room. . . and then just went about the rest of my day collecting rocks.
With gloves on this time!! Interestingly, I did see one or two more scorpions - now that I was looking for them! - as I was turning over rocks (the one that stung me had been underneath one) but I just ignored them.
I think I ended with a small red spot on my hand, that was gone by the next day.
The next time I saw my doctor (for an unrelated matter) he gently teased me about my "alarming incident". Of course he had been informed that I had called in. He lived in the foothills too, not too far from me - and he explained that he had often seen these tiny scorpions at his place. He was surprised that I had never seen one at mine.
Just a caveat here: This is meant to be a funny story, with me as the butt of the joke.
This is not intended to make light of Judy's story in any way. I have seen scorpions in the southwest (New Mexico comes to mind) that were a couple of inches long. Alarming looking beasties. These guys, of course, carry a bit more venom than my little black guy, and a scorpion sting - from any size scorpion - can have very bad consequences indeed for someone allergic to scorpion venom.
Luckily, although I am allergic to many things, scorpion venom appears to not be one of them.
Anne