Onions more than salad ingredient

Another broadcaster on Facebook was sharing a picture of herself doing a radio show with an exotic lizard climbing all over her.

Have you ever worked on the job with an animal hanging around?

Oh, I don’t mean cows or horses or the shop cat or the business’ guard dog. I mean something exotic, something weird.

Like the time I worked in a place infested with scorpions.

This was down the road apiece in Roswell.

I worked at a place that had scorpions everywhere. There were scorpions skittering across the floor, scorpions in the overhead lighting fixtures, scorpions everywhere.

For the longest time my philosophy was, “I reckon if I don’t bother them, they won’t bother me.” After all, the boss wasn’t going to spring for an exterminator so I might as well get used to them.

Then there was that Saturday I wore sandals to work.

I was on the air, spinning the country hits, when this hot, burning feeling rocketed up my leg from my right foot. It felt like someone stuck me with a branding iron.

I looked down just in time to see a scorpion skedaddle away.

“Well,” I said after the end of a song. “I’ve just been stung by a Pecos Valley scorpion. Am I going to die, dear listeners?”

Suddenly all of the radio station’s phone lines lit up.

“You need some onion,” said just about every caller. “And you ain’t gonna die.”

In a few minutes, a listener was at the radio station door with a little baggie of chopped onion.

I put some of the stuff on the burning area and, voila! It was like a miracle cure. The burning went away.

I guess that’s about the most exotic animal I’ve ever had to work with.

Of course there were those river rats back east.

But that’s another story.

Grant McGee is a long-time broadcaster and former truck driver who rides bicycles and likes to talk about his many adventures on the road of life. Contact him at his blog:

grantmcgeewrites.com