Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Initiation: Bite Number One

I got bit today. By an Inchman.

I was transplanting seedlings and watering the garden while wearing my Crocs (yeah yeah yeah, SOOOO unfashionable, but mine are Disney ones, so automatically awesome, and also, I was gardening) and felt a sudden stinging jab. Like when you get a splinter stuck in your shoe. And then it quickly got exponentially worse and felt like burning stinging angry pain. Like a really really angry splinter.

I ripped off my shoe expecting a scorpion, even though I'd been outside for a good 30 minutes, and I shake my shoes out REALLY well before putting them on.

Nope.

Out ran a little Inchman, all terrified and scurrying around.

I quickly hobbled into the house with my now swollen toe and half my foot, asking my husband, who was laying on the couch, what I should do. Because I couldn't remember if they were venomous or not, and my foot was swelling up a lot for an ant bite.

So I sat down as my husband Googled something about onions and how they help swelling go down, and he assured me he was almost positive that the ants weren't that bad. And that I looked cute in all my near panicking and was handling the pain better than he expected (still not sure if that was a compliment...), and then I started to cry. Because it HURT. And mostly because the possibility of stepping on a snake is constantly in the back of my mind, every time I step out of doors, so I think I was more panicked and stressed by that thought than the actual bite.

Which is a shame, because I adore being barefoot. Not as much as some people I know, but summer comes around, or warm spring, and I want nothing more than to take off my shoes and feel warm damp grass and cool earth beneath my feet.

I'm scared to do that here just yet.

And it really did hurt pretty bad. Still tingles now, hours later, though the swelling has gone down to almost nothing. My poor baby toe....

And, thank you, yet again, Wikipedia, for some information (some of which I knew) on the Inchman.

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