The Wish Whisperer and the Death Stalker

I visited the Museum of Natural History when I was playing tourist in the Big Apple. I had met an entomologist at a birthday party a couple nights before, and she had graciously offered to get me in to see the new exhibits for free. My new entomologist friend took me through the butterfly exhibit, where a gentle little speckled fellow landed on my head.

According to Native American tradition, if a butterfly spontaneously lands on your head, it is considered very good luck and if you whisper a wish to it, it will carry it off to the spirit world to be fulfilled. But I couldn't think of a wish before my little spirit wish carrier fluttered off to go sit on an orange - what does that mean?

The 5th floor of the Museum of Natural History houses the research offices, where solitary invertebrate zoologists sit among dusty cabinets full of dried, multi-legged specimens. My new entomologist friend showed me her collection of bees and gave me a tour of the horrifyingly enormous tarantulas and cockroaches that were sitting in glass cages in the hallways. Like little pets. We passed a tall man with a grey ponytail in the hallway, and she leaned in to me and told me that he was the world's foremost expert on scorpions.

Speaking of scorpions. On a back table in the entomology office was a collection of small glass cages that housed various living horrors. The introduction to these quaint little creatures went something like this, "that centipede is the biggest and most poisonous in the world. If it bites you you have like 30 seconds to get to the hospital." And after meeting a couple of the hugest narliest scorpions I could imagine -and after touching the tail of one of them!!! - I got to meet the most poisonous scorpion in the world: The Death Stalker.

The Death Stalker is a small yellowish creature that was balled up in the corner of the cage. Apparently its venom has a very strong neurotoxin, in addition to all its liquefactive enzymes, that will stop your heart in a matter of minutes leading to virtually inevitable death. The arthropod expert who looks after him says that he would rather be bitten by the most poisonous cobra in the world.

I had recurrent visions of being in a Steve Martin comedy and non-chalantly leaning on and breaking the table, causing all the glass cages to come crashing on top of me and ending up with the Death Stalker crawling on my face. Actually, if it was a real Steve Martin comedy, the Death Stalker would probably crawl up my pants leg towards my crotch and I would cross my eyes. Thankfully, none of this actually happened, except over and over again in my mind.

This experience renewed my interest in the fascinating world of toxicology - I mean, who in their right mind wouldn't want to become an expert in poisonous envenomations, when given the chance. (And I recently learned that they are starting an Envenomation Fellowship at Loma Linda University, the first of its kind). But all of this made me think about what happens when someone with a potentially fatal sting from a rare African scorpion or centipede arrives in the Emergency Department by ambulance. Where is the stockpile of rare African centipede antivenom located? How fast can they get it to me if I need it? This begs further investigation.