I've been getting desperate for some adult social interaction in the last week or two. So I was really happy when a friend from church, Steffi (pronounced Shtehfee), invited me to join her and her husband, Alec, on a day trip to a butterfly/rain forest habitat thingy in Freiburg.
We met and became friends through church and the Monday night Bible study, but then they moved in October about 2 hours south and west in Switzerland to Solothurn, where Steffi got a job as a dental hygienist a few months after graduating from dental school. I haven't seen them since well before Christmas, and I've missed them both.
Today I took the train for about 2 hours to Solothurn, where they met me at the station and took me out to an Italian lunch in the old town area. Then they drove us about 40 minutes to the Freiburg area where this sort of nature habitat is located out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by low mountains and lots of fields.
It has three main sections: the butterfly room; a "nocturne" or exhibit of nocturnal animals in simulated night-time darkness so you can see them when they're active; and a rain forest room.
I've never seen a night time exhibit before, and that was really fascinating. I think my favorite part was that they had bats everywhere and they flew so close around you that you could feel the tiny wisps of air on your face from their beating wings. They even had a faux cave with a low ceiling, and you had to bend over so as not to bump your head on the tiny bats jiggling from their upside down ceiling perches, or swooping suddenly down over your head.
The butterfly room was exactly like two other similar exhibits I've seen in Germany and in Colorado. This one, however, also had a sectioned off dark room with small glass cases in which they had exotic and very large insects. They seriously reminded me of the monster-sized bugs in Peter Jackson's "King Kong," which is the only movie scene that -- as an adult -- I still have to watch with my eyes closed so I don't get nauseated. But these bugs -- smaller, behind glass and not slurpily devouring anyone -- didn't bother me. Mostly because they were behind glass.
That's why, when we had been in the butterfly room for about an hour and were just about to leave, it was quite disturbing when Alec spotted one of the "walking stick scorpions" hanging from a vine just over our heads, and just outside the door of the sectioned off insect room.
I must note here that this thing was about 6 inches long, and had dinosaur or reptile-like scales and sharp, pointy spines all over it's body. This was no dinky little cockroach. We're talking big, thick and dangerous looking..
We discussed whether these things were supposed to be roaming loose in the butterfly room, or if this one had escaped the insect room. Previously we'd run into a young British man who was feeding all the butterflies and stopping to tell us bits of trivia and insights about the different species of butterflies and hummingbirds diving and dancing around the room. Now he was nowhere to be seen. Shrugging, we left to see the other exhibits.
A few hours later, it was near closing, but Steffi wanted to see the butterflies one more time. We re-entered the butterfly room and strolled the bushy paths, stopping to see if the walking stick scorpion was still dangling from the vine. It was.
This time the British guy was standing right there, with a cluster of Japanese tourists behind him, snapping their Nikons while he spritzed water inside a case of chrysalises. Alec got his attention and pointed to the walking stick.
The British guy peered at it, then said, "Oh no."
"I hate these things," he added. "They have a stinger on the back."
He cautiously poked it and sure enough, the long abdomen curled up in defense. The British guy jerked back.
OK, I know I'm one of those wildly squeamish and ridiculously-easily-freaked-out-by-very-harmless-and-tiny-insects type of female. But even I know it's not a good thing when the insect keeper jerks back from the big, juicy, scaly insects.
The Japanese tourists were quickly entranced by this display of live, wildlife action, so they clustered around him and frenetically snapped their shutters.
Meantime, a cloud of very large, white butterflies settled onto the British staff guy's head, glasses, arms and nose, vying for the perfect landing spot. He carefully swatted at them, gently removing them from his glasses and face. With one hand he poked at the walking stick scorpion, which attached itself to his hand, and with the other he waved off the attack butterflies that wouldn't leave his face alone.
The staff guy had realized that the scorpion had just molted. As a result, all its limbs were very soft, including the stinger, which made it temporarily harmless. But he had trouble balancing the scorpion, which was trying to crawl upside down on his hand, while keeping the persistent, and now apparently carnivorous, white butterflies out of his face.
At this point, I couldn't decide whether this display was horrifying or hilarious. I settled on hilarious when the staff guy headed into the insect room with the scorpion, still hounded by my video camera and the Japanese photographers, and he begged us not to put this video of him on the Internet.
I turned horrified when he admitted that a couple of these scorpions had once gotten out and now there were thousands of them in the butterfly room.
Steffi and I stared at each other. She said, "I'm really glad we didn't hear about that until we were leaving anyway."
See my video of this close encounter with exotic wildlife now.
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