OnMyMind

We had a bit of a scare tonight in the middle of packing for our trip to Tokyo tomorrow. We had put the kids to bed a bit early, hoping to free up time to do last minute cleaning and packing, but anyone with kids knows that it was only wishful thinking…
I had just put our son to bed, and we had started attacking the pile of books and toys that he “forgot” to put away, when we heard screams from upstairs. “Mommy! Daddy! KEMUSHI!…” Although he used the Japanese word for “worm”, we both knew that what he meant to say was MUKADE, so we both sprinted up the stairs. This was pretty much one of my nightmares come to life, with all the MUKADE that we have had in the house, I constantly fear the day that one bites one of the kids.
I got to the top of the stairs and my son was standing at the gate in mild hysterics. He showed us where he had seen the MUKADE crawl down the door before it disappeared. I pulled up the futons, looked under the rug and behind the bookcase, but I could not find the little beast. We assured our son that the little guy was probably more frightened than he was, and we were able to get him back to bed. After he fell asleep, I came back down to finish packing. About 40 minutes later we heard crying from upstairs. My wife went up to take a look, and she came back downstairs with my son. He had been woken up by being bitten by the MUKADE. I went back up to search again for the centipede, and just as I was about to give up I found him. We was lying between my son’s and my daughter’s futons, either hiding or taking a nap. He is gone now.
Back downstairs….
My son’s injury did not seem bad. My wife was able to quickly squeeze the poison out of the bite and was the area around it, so there was no swelling. Just to be cautious we called the hospital to see what we should do, as MUKADE bites can cause Anaphylactic Shock , and can be quite dangerous for small children.
So anyway, he is OK. It was a bit of a scare, but the doctor said that he was just fine. A little medicine for itching, a little for pain, and he will be fine.
Then, he climbs on the couch and wants to watch a movie. Apparently getting bitten by a poisonous insect trumps the bedtime rules. The kicker is that he specifically asked to watch Monsters Inc., and mentions Randall by name. If you haven’t seen the movie, Randall is a scary monster in the story that looks a lot like a centipede. Go figure.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 6th, 2004 at 12:56 am and is filed under Nature, Family Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.