Scorpions! They seem to be taking over my life at the moment. In February/March 2017 I was helping with the construction of the Sendero Pacifico hiking trail in Costa Rica. While staying in a bunk house in the hamlet of Veracruz, I accidentally sat onto a scorpion. Of course it stung me – hurt like hell, like a bee or wasp sting. Fortunately they are not especially poisonous to humans, and by the next day I was fine.

Scorpion Revenge: I ate one

But at the Explorers Club Annual Dinner in NYC later in March, I got my revenge on that scorpion: I ate her cousin. Our dinner usually features unusual foods such as invasive or sustainable species. This year’s appetizers included sustainables such as small scorpions and tarantulas. The scorpion tasted bitter, as revenge is said to be.

I then ate a tarantula that “That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside” of me. I ate the spider to catch the scorpion? “I don’t know why.” The difficulty with the tarantula was getting all its legs inside of my mouth – they kept dangling out the sides. But it had cocoa powder on it, so was palatable. Then again, I had to chew a long time to break up its exoskeleton so I could swallow it. I don’t think I’ll volunteer to do that again.

Recorded for Posterity

The Explorers Club Annual Dinner, a black tie fundraiser, was impressive, with polar explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes as the keynote speaker. Actor Robert De Niro hosted our event, and anthropologist Wade Davis was our MC. Minimizing our impact on climate change was oft the topic of conversation, as USA Today picked up on. (That’s me, putting the scorpion into my mouth, halfway through the video.)

By the way, did I mention that I am a Scorpio?