The long dry grass stems swished, crunched, and snapped under the weight of my fathers’ steps. The grass swayed from side to side, making anything near the roots impossible to see. Camouflaged in its surroundings crouched a sepia brown scorpion; its legs covering its tough body for protection. My dad stood next to a giant gray rock, trying to hide from his older brothers. As most big brothers are they try to hurt you whenever and wherever, even if it is during a friendly game of tag. The scorpion was aware that my dad was standing nearby, but my dad was not conscious that he had entered the scorpions’ territory.

My dad, still crouching, took a step to the right to see over the boulder and locate where his siblings were. The sudden movement must have made the scorpion think of it as an attack because he brought his dangerous stinger over his head and stung my dad in the toe. The scorpion scampered away and my dad sat on the pointy grass howling in pain. In less than a minute his brothers found his hiding spot and came over by the immense rock. They examined where the scorpion stung him and told him to “suck it up.” Because he knew his brothers were not going to help him he got up on one leg using the rock to support him. He struggled to get up and barely made it over to the steps before his house. He sat down on the cold steps and yelled out for help. No one answered to his call or came to help him, so he took a knife and cut around the wound to get all the venom out. Pus started oozing out and his muscles started to twitch uncontrollably. The venom quickly spread upwards paralyzing his leg. To stop it from spreading even more throughout his body he took a cloth and tightly tied it around his thigh. The intense pain and numbness that my dad experienced continued for the next twenty-four hours.

The excruciating pain did not let him sleep for that day, but after a while all the symptoms left and no permanent damage was done. When my grandpa got home and heard what happened, he was furious. He was not very happy with the way my dad’s brothers had acted and they were sent to go hunt after the scorpion that stung their younger brother. Fortunately, they found no sign of the scorpion so they guessed it was far away and it would not harm someone any time soon. Unfortunately, they blamed the whole thing on my dad and he got punched and beat by his brothers.