MEET MY LITTLE FRIEND!
BIG ENOUGH TO EAT ME!!!!
Let me set the scene.
A couple arrive at the beachfront hotel for a few days fishing and R and R. He’s been here before. This is her first time. It’s a nice place by Baja standards. Not the Hilton but not the Shady Road Inn either. They get the key. He opens the door. She goes in first.
Before he’s half-way in the door, she comes running out screaming about a huge lizard on the wall the size of a komodo dragon, “big enough to eat me!” The monster is making guttural croaking noises at her. She literally runs him over. She demands he change hotel and “get her outta this country!”
He turns on the light. It’s a 3 inch gecko lizard smiling from the wall at them with those big eyes.
Second scenario, we check in a fisherman. He’s a salty cuss. Been everywhere. Done everything. Caught every fish imaginable in all parts of the globe according to his own PR that he recites to everyone he meets. He goes to his room.
Five minutes later the front desk receptionist picks up the phone and immediately pushes it away from his ear. Anyone nearby can hear the person on the other end screaming at the top of their lungs.
According to the receptionist, the worldly angler is in a tizzy. He wants out. He wants to go home NOW. He wants me to personally take him back to the airport and he wants a whole crew of maintenance men in his room NOW! There are huge flying insects attacking him!
Four of us go rushing up and barge through the door like those officers you see on the COPS television show! Bad boys. Bad boys. What ya gonna do? Rescue the fisherman! Hurry! Hurry!
One of our maintenance guys has an industrial sprayer. Another has gloves and a netted helmet. Our intrepid fisherman is standing on the bed yelling and pushing himself into a corner as if the hordes from hell are after him. Like his underwear are on fire!
We find… a bee. One bee. Well, OK a big bee. Maintenance man doffs his shoe. Smacks the bee against the wall. SMACK! Job done. We walk out shaking our heads.
“Well, a moment before you guys came in they were swarming like there were thousands of them, “ he says sheepishly. “Really…thousands!!!” His voice trails off. We believe you.
Third scenario. We are on a camping trip kayaking the islands. We spend our evenings in sleeping bags under old palapa lean-to’s erected and used by commercial fishermen. It’s hot so a lot of us sleep on top of our bags in shorts and t-shirts or under the stars. Baja as it was meant to be!
In the middle of the night one guy is screaming like something crawled up his shorts. It did! A small scorpion apparently fell out’ve the the overhead palms, crawled up his leg and bit him just inches from you-know-where!
He’s in pain! He’s in panic! His mind floods with National Georgraphis specials; old Tarzan movies; and horrendous stories of death in the desert! He’s leaping and contorting and now woken up the entire camp! The agony. Oh to die in such a place! He remembers laughing at those juvenile jokes of his youth about someone having to “suck out the poison.”
As the professional guide, I quickly assess the situation. I must act decisively. I run to the ice chest and pop a beer. I grab him and tell him he MUST calm down or the poison will travel faster! His eyes grow wide, but he slows down. Sweat pouring down his face. Everyone is surrounding us in grave concern!
He is nearly in tears. “Here, pour ½ this cold beer on the bite.” He does so wincing more at the iciness than the pain
“What do I do with the rest of this?” he asks holding the bottle. Eyes are wide with terror.
“Drink the rest.” What? “You’ll sleep better and you won’t wake the rest of us up. In about an hour you won’t even feel the bite. Unless you have some rare allergy, that bite is nothing more than a bee sting. Good night. Show’s over everyone.” I walk back to my sleeping bag.
You know…I’m glad Baja still has bugs. Yes, spiders, snakes, scorpions, tarantualas, flying critters. They can be a nuisance, but most are actually pretty harmless once you shake all those TV images out of your head. They are NOT waiting to attack you. They have a lot more to fear from us than the other way around.
The day all the critters are gone is the day Baja will be one big concrete paved parking lot of condos and strip malls and t-shirt shops. It’s headed that way. God help the bugs! The humans are coming.
That's My Story 
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