Parrothead Ramblings

This thing lights their little asses up like Vegas.

A couple weeks ago, I was with ZMan running a couple of errands. We had to go to this snake and ugly critter shop in Mesa. This joint was Heebie-Jeebie central, loaded with critters that make most folks' skin crawl, and staffed by what looked like the cast of This Is Spinal Tap. They have a freakin' snake in there that weighed 250lbs. ZMan loved it. I was wishing I had my Remington 870. They have snakes, spiders, scorpions, and - I'm not making this up - a couple different varieties of cockroaches for sale.

Cockroaches? People buy cockroaches?

Hell, if I'd known that 30 years ago when I lived in the deep south, I would have stocked up on those damn palmetto bugs instead of squashing them on a daily basis. I could be retired now.

Anyway, ZMan was there to buy a couple of "feeder" mice. These are mice raised for the sole purpose of being ingested by folks' pet carnivores. He bought a couple of them for his snake, the guy put them in a brown paper bag, and we headed out. Of course, I couldn't resist the temptation to walk behind him through the store, loudly saying "DEAD MOUSE WALKIN' HERE. STEP ASIDE FOLKS, DEAD MOUSE WALKIN!" Zman has a pet snake, and it was viscerally very cool to watch the mouse snatched, squished, and eaten whole. Sorry, Mickey.

While I was there, I saw they had these "scorpion hunter" black lights. I couldn't resist. Wayners and Bo both have scorpions at their houses and the little demons light up under black light like the 4th of July. Last night, Wayners and I put on bandanas and camo, donned jungle boots, blacked our faces, and went to work. The first one we found was under the tiki statue in his backyard. I pointed him out, and Wayners stomped him. Sort of. He stomped, lifted up his foot to observe his work, and the little bastard hauled ass like a scalded cat, escaping uninjured. Nice job, great white hunter. How do you stomp something and miss?

The next one was in a bad place: Right on top of the low wall around his pool pump, next to the gate, where you would put your hand when going through the gate. This time, he left no room for error. He hit the damned thing with a flip-flop so hard that itty-bitty chunks of scorpion went everywhere. Did you know that scorpion corpse debris still fluoresces under black light? It just doesn't look much like a scorpion any more, but more like somebody hocked a glow-in-the-dark loogie.

By the end of the expedition, the body count stood at five. We're hoping their pissed-off buddies don't show up, looking for a little payback. A couple were tiny little guys, clearly juveniles. I asked Wayners how he could kill them like that when they were just babies.

"Easy." He said, "You just don't lead 'em as much."
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