An Unusual Day
Wednesday, December 23, started with a surprise. Betsy got up early and decided to get some firewood. She picked up a piece and a scorpion dropped down. Yes, you read that right, a scorpion! It was about 1 1/2" long. Betsy took a couple pictures before picking it up by it's tail! and throwing it over the railing of the patio towards the car 10' below. The pictures do not show the end of the tail so I went down to the car and found it. I could clearly see the cruel 1/8" stinger on it's tail. It's claws looked ready to grab it's prey or opponent and flick it's tail forward. I later looked online trying to find out what species it was. I did not find out for sure but it looked just like an Emperor scorpion; except for it's legs which were a bit yellow, the Emperor scorpion's legs are black. It is not dangerous. It also looked like a Fattail scorpion except the tail was not thick enough for a Fattail. Fattails are extremely dangerous. An optimist would say it was an Emperor but it could have been a Fattail.
At 10:00am we (minus dad) went to our host Mark's house to help decorate his Christmas tree and help feed his goldfish (at least fifty), a single Koi (with the goldfish), and two rabbits named Peter and Jessica. The rabbits ate carrots with some grain. We fed the goldfish and the Koi some food and then found out we weren't supposed to because A: they were well fed and B: he wanted them a bit more hungry for his guests on Christmas Day to have fun feeding them. Decorating the tree was a lot of fun. First we put some tissue paper around the base to cover up the pot and then added some "snow". We put a star on top and some Christmas tree lights that were over 60 years old, One string was of Santa/Father Christmas parachuting to someone's chimney. The other was shells with a part of the Nativity inside, each slightly different. We hung ornaments that were gourds from Peru that had intricate patterns carved into them. We hung others too, even two from Finland.
In the afternoon we (except dad) went to the town of Collodi where the author of Pinocchio lived. We went to Pinocchio Park. In the museum part we dressed up a bit in some pinocchio style clothes and posed for a picture. Next there was a large chess set that I really enjoyed. The game was girls (white) vs boys (black). The girls won but we all had fun. We played another game in the Park, Bria rolled the wheel and we all moved accordingly, Landon won. When we were climbing out of the mouth of the whale that swallowed Pinocchio, this little guy decided to visit us and block the way out. The girls had to go around the long way. After I played another quick game of chess with Landon we left, walking toward a butterfly sanctuary.
The sanctuary was in a big garden. We went in and we heard birds chirping, but no butterflies. The first one we saw was eating at a little food tray. There were a few other butterflies we saw but mostly they were settling down for the winter I think. I few other things I saw there were cockroaches, tortoises and walkingsticks, even some piranha from the Amazon River.
We explored the garden and climbed the hill it was on. There was a friendly cat and some goats (in a cage) in the garden too.
We enjoyed the garden and headed home. As we left the town we saw the tallest Pinocchio in the world.
Over dinner dad found out what kind of scorpion it was, Euscorpius Alpha is it's Latin name. It's sting is the equivalent of the sting of a bee, but still it hurts. On the site that dad discovered it said no trip to Italy is complete without seeing one. I guess that is one step closer to the completion of our trip.