Chapter 107 Catching Scorpions at Night
However, the little yellow boys are as good as the others, but each one is more stupid than the other, and they are stupider and clumsier than the other yellow boys. They are almost two months old. If you can't even catch birds and mice, don't expect them to steal chickens.
A few times when Wang Susu was feeding the chickens and ducks, they also went to the stone trough on the other side of the chicken house to eat and drink. As a result, the chickens and ducks drove them away and ran around the yard. There were more than ten of them. The chickens and ducks showed off their power together, and even Xiao Huang and Xiao Pang didn't dare to resist. Gao Lu pecked away a few pieces of bald hair from these three little things. I don't remember this long. Every day I either bully the little rabbit or tease the chickens and ducks. Sometimes I jump on the back of two dogs to play with them. This makes Heiwa Xiaojin very tired of them. A few days ago, Xiaojin was so anxious that he was blocked in the house. They were not allowed to come down in the yard, and Xiao Huang and Xiao Fatty could not complain to Chen Ling. As long as they came down, Xiao Jin would bite them, so he became more honest.
Chen Ling pinched the three chubby little fools and saw that they were so comfortable on his lap that he closed his eyes and dozed off. He was speechless for a moment: "They are as silly as Hei Wa. "Building meat alone does not add skills."
Speaking of which, Huangpizi in the mountains is quite capable. He can basically catch mice and birds, and swim up trees. Some people think that Huangpizi cannot swim, but this is not the case. In homes close to the river, yellow skins often swim along the water and harm chickens and ducks. When you get up, you will see wet paw prints all over the chicken coops, which is hard to guard against.
"Oh, it's useless, it's useless..."
Chen Ling shook his head and sighed, grabbed the little fools by the scruff of their necks and threw them to the ground, regardless of their confused and aggrieved faces. Looking like this, I went to the backyard to feed the silkworms, and cleaned the silkworm excrement in the plaque. Now the silkworms have shed their skin three times, and they will start to form cocoons again. At this time, every two or three Feed once every hour, even at night.
But Chen Ling found it troublesome, so he planted two mulberry trees in the cave. After going out for a walk every day, he bundled the branches and leaves and carried several bundles back, so that Wang Susu didn't have to I went to pick mulberry leaves. The mulberry leaves produced in Dongtian are extremely nutritious. At first, Wang Susu got up several times at night to feed the silkworms. As a result, they could not finish the mulberry leaves they put on before going to bed, and there were no signs of poor growth. Just don't worry about it anymore.
After the silkworm excrement is cleaned, it is piled at the root of the wall and allowed to ferment. Then I poured the fermented silkworm excrement from the previous two days into a bucket, mixed it with bran, and stirred it up to make simple fish food. I returned to the front yard and poured it into the lotus pond. There was a sudden commotion in the pond. , all the fish came up to the surface and started fighting with their mouths wide open. Now, because Chen Ling poured half a bucket of stream water into the pond every two days, these ordinary ornamental fish have become wild and fierce, and they are easier to feed. He eats everything and is not picky at all. Not to mention silkworm excrement, steamed bun crumbs can be crushed in the head by swimming to the surface of the water to grab all kinds of things at home, it is really not wasteful at all.
“Fortunately, it is much more beautiful than when it was first put in. Otherwise, if it is just getting more tempered and off-roading, it is better to put a few grass carp in.”
Chen Ling put down the bucket, squatted beside it and admired it for a while, then went to cook the rice. After Wang Susu came back from herding the cattle, the two of them had eaten, washed the pots and bowls, and began to sit together and tie the wheat straw into racks. , must be prepared before silkworms spin cocoons for them to spin silk, which is often called the "mountain" that silkworms climb up the mountain in rural areas, and is usually called a silkworm rack.
After a while, Liu Nier called him outside the house with a group of little boys to tell him to go out and catch scorpions.
"Why are you bringing so many bottles? Where are you going to catch them tonight?"
Chen Ling walked out and saw the little children holding kerosene lamps or torches one by one. , standing at the gate of the courtyard with a bunch of cans and wine bottles hanging around his neck. This guy was obviously going to do something big.
"Hey, let's walk around the village first. If it doesn't work, go out and look for us. But Nanda said we won't be allowed to go up the mountain, even if you have Uncle Fugui, because there are wolves on the mountain at night."< br>
Liu Nier sniffed, then took two cans and bottles and handed them to Chen Ling: "Here, I brought these for you. I'm afraid you won't be able to tighten the lids tightly with the bottles and the scorpions will crawl out."
"Haha, okay, my uncle's love for you is not in vain."
Chen Ling took it and tied it around his waist, then went home and took a bamboo grate clip from next to the stove, and carried it The flashlight followed the little dolls out the door.
After walking for a while, he suddenly realized that something was wrong. Chen Ling frowned and looked at Liu Nier: "Is your baby missing a tooth?"
"Hehehehe, Uncle Fugui, what do you do? The prawns were so fragrant that I ate them in one meal at home with steamed buns. I didn’t feel anything bad after eating them. When I woke up early, I saw that two of my teeth were knocked out.”
"My mother also said that she threw it on the roof, otherwise the teeth would not grow properly, and she didn't find it."
Liu Nier grinned, her two lower front teeth were gone.
"Uncle Fugui, I also lost my teeth, the big stupid ones inside."
"My teeth are small ones. They are about to fall out and there is only a little bit of flesh left. My grandma said to use a thread to give them to me. Pulling it, I was afraid of pain and didn’t let her pull it.”
The other two little kids also refused to lag behind and ran up to him with their mouths open.
As a result, the torch in his hand almost burned Chen Ling's hair.
The parents of the little children allowed them to go out to look for scorpions, but they were reluctant to use flashlights, so they lit torches. Most of the torches in the mountains are made of hemp poles, which are afraid of wolves. The hemp stalk, after soaking and peeling off the outer skin of the ramie, leaves the middle pole. After a little drying, it becomes light and white. It is convenient and trouble-free to use it as a torch, and it burns smoothly.
In recent years, ramie has been widely used in making hemp rope and linen cloth, but it gradually became rare in the early 21st century.
Hemp poles are generally about 1.5 meters long. A dozen or so poles can be tied into a small torch. They are safer than reed poles and can be used by small children.
"Okay, okay, uncle saw it. Changing teeth is a good thing. When the teeth are replaced, you will grow up."
Chen Ling said with a smile.
Little babies like adults to say that they have grown up. When they hear this, they all jump up and down with joy.
Today's night is good. In the sky, the semicircle moon exudes a faint halo, illuminating the entire earth into a silvery gray color. The weirs in the village, the reservoirs outside the village, and the ponds are full of frog sounds, and various insects are also screaming loudly in the grass. On this early summer night, accompanied by the cool mountain breeze, everything seems to be full of life.
However, the corn has not been planted yet. I am tired from working during the day. There are not many people out to catch scorpions at night. There are only a few here and there. They are bending down with torches and lifting up the stones under their feet one by one. They are unlucky. I don’t know how many rocks I lifted but I couldn’t catch a single scorpion. If I was lucky, I could fit half a bottle under one rock.
Seeing these people catching scorpions, Liu Nier had no intention of running over to fight with them. She led Chen Ling into the old house in the village with a smile.
The old houses in the mountains were not all built of adobe, but also of stone, with yellow mud on the outside. However, over time, the stones inside will be exposed due to wind and rain, and some people are more particular about it. , they use stones to build stone walls to surround the yard, and some use stones to make pig pens, donkey pens, etc. Scorpions like to stay in the cracks of these stones.
Because it is dark and humid inside and there are many small insects, it has become a paradise for scorpions to feed.
To catch scorpions in a place like this, the key is to be fast, otherwise it is easy for the scorpions to slip back into the cracks in the wall, or escape among the weeds, making it difficult to find them.
Scorpions are actually very smart. Some scorpions use their appearance to be similar to the color of loess. If you shine a flashlight on it, it will remain motionless and pretend to be dead to confuse people. Some scorpions are When you shine a flashlight on it, it will retract into the cracks in the rocks and hide when it knows it is dangerous. It will crawl out when there is no light and movement outside. When you shine the flashlight on it again, it will hide again. This is following If you are fighting guerrillas, it will be difficult to catch it without much effort.
However, although there are many scorpions in the old houses in the village, due to the inaccessibility, they are overgrown with weeds, and there are also various terrible poisonous insects or other unknown creatures hiding in them. Some of the roofs have collapsed in half. It was crumbling and very scary.
No, when they broke into an old house with torches, the sudden fire made the originally peaceful environment become noisy. Bats and various birds all fluttered their wings and flew out of the old house. There were also hedgehogs in the grass. Something was still running around, filling the air with choking smoke.
Despite this, there are indeed more scorpions around the old house. Perhaps there are more small insects and small flying insects here. In addition to the ones that were frightened away by the fire, there are actually many scorpions motionless at the base of the wall. , they are basically medium-sized, four to five centimeters long, slightly yellow in color, and there is one within a few steps. If you lie there and don’t look carefully, you will really be fooled by them.
After the little dolls saw it, their eyes were shining as if they were seeing gold. They walked over lightly, clamped the scorpion's tail and quickly put it into the bottle, quickly and accurately, no After a while, each child caught four or five scorpions.
Immediately after, Chen Ling took them around several uninhabited old houses, and almost everyone caught almost half of the bottle.
“An old female scorpion!”
After walking around half of the village, when they reached a horse-blocking wall at the edge of the village, Komori's eyes suddenly lit up, he screamed in surprise, and rushed over.
Then with quick eyes and quick hands, I clamped its tail with a clamp, let it turn around and use its thin legs to hold the clamp and struggle with all its strength, directly put it into the bottle, and quickly tightened the bottle cap. This kid wasn't as many as Liu Nier and the others, but they still managed to catch a full bottle. Speaking of which, female scorpions are easy to deal with. If it is a light yellow male scorpion with its tail raised high and full of vigilance, you must be careful: when people use a clip to clamp its tail, it often It will dodge quickly, change direction and quickly escape into the grass or cracks in the rocks on all sides, making it difficult for people to guard against it.
In this way, you need to concentrate to avoid wasting your efforts, because even after the male scorpion is firmly clamped, it still refuses to surrender and will struggle desperately. In addition to clawing with its four legs like a female scorpion, the male scorpion's frighteningly thick tail will shake violently, making the clamps snap. If any scorpion catcher gets stung in such a situation, it will be unlucky...
The sting of a scorpion is not pleasant. It is not only painful but also swollen, which is very torturous.
While walking around the village, I was looking for scorpions to catch. In fact, there were not many scorpions this year. Seven or eight children plus Chen Ling, an adult, searched for almost an hour in the east of the village, but they only caught 400. Many scorpions, because some scorpions are too small to be judged by size alone, so if these scorpions can be sold for 20 yuan in total, it is not a huge harvest.
After a while, they moved to the vicinity of the wheat field. The houses nearby were not as orderly as they looked in the village. The adobe houses were crowded together. The courtyards of the houses were very low and overgrown with trees and weeds. , it’s gloomy at night, all of them are old houses.
The earth wall is very old, very old. It is rugged due to years of wind erosion and rain peeling off, and it is also covered with black and green moss.
On the edge of the crack in the wall, there are indeed many scorpions entrenched, all of them are majestic and fat, with long tails with poisonous stings at the top, bent over their heads like arches, maintaining instinctive vigilance. The dark color of their bodies proves that they are old and have shed their shells many times, which also proves that their venom is rich and thick.
After going here, the harvest was pretty good, especially Liu Nier, who caught seven or eight big male scorpions in a row. The other little kids also caught more than half of the second bottle.
After catching this, continue walking outside the village.
After walking a few steps, there were continuous barking of dogs near the wheat field. In several shacks around, someone poked his head out to take a look and saw clearly that it was Chen Ling with a few The baby quickly shrank back and continued sleeping.
These people are looking after the food to prevent someone from stealing it at night.
Chen Ling glanced around and saw that there were many shacks around, but he didn't know anyone. They were all from the first and second brigades in the west of the village.
"Uncle Fugui, there are scorpions on the wall over there, and there are several under the eaves. They just shrank into the cracks in the wall. I can see them clearly."
Walking to the northwest corner of the village, Liu Nier pointed at an old house that was about to collapse and shouted.
Chen Ling turned on the flashlight and squinted his eyes twice. With his eyesight, he could indeed see the scorpion moving, but after the light shone there, it gradually stopped moving.
"There are also scorpions on the wall. My brother caught them last year. Uncle Fugui, let's go home and get the pole."
Zhu Wa'er also followed at this time.
"No, not even with a pole. I tried poking with a pole, but some big scorpions fell to death. They can't be sold for money, so it's not worth a trip home."< br>
Liu Nier immediately retorted.
Then he turned to look at Chen Ling: "Ida said that you need to use a broom. Let the adults use the broom to sweep down. Uncle Fugui, let's go out tomorrow and bring the broom."
The houses in the mountains are not high. Many scorpions like to climb to higher places when they come out for activities at night. If they climb a little higher, the little kids will not be able to catch them. They are not willing to give up, so they go to get poles to poke them. In fact, This is not a good idea, because if the scorpion is small and thin, it will be fine if it falls, but if it grows bigger or fatter, it will be troublesome. Scorpions are not afraid of being bored, and they will be fine if they stay in a bottle overnight, but they are afraid of falling and getting fat. The big male scorpion is heavy and will be half dead if dropped. It will dry out soon after you pick it up and put it away. A dead scorpion is worthless, which is a pity.
It would be easier to catch the scorpion if it were an adult. Just tie a broom to the bamboo pole. The broom is soft. Use the broom to slowly sweep it down from a high place. Then the scorpion will be fine. .
"Okay, let's come out tomorrow and bring the broom with us."
Chen Ling nodded and took the babies home. It was getting late and their parents would come out to look for them if they didn't go back, so he sent them back along the road.
But after seeing them off and walking back with Liu Nier and Xiao Sen, a stench wafted over, almost knocking people off their feet.
"Uncle, someone is digging manure."
Komori pointed in the direction of the elementary school and shouted.
Liu Nier also looked over and said, "Someone is digging out the dung in the latrine of our school."
Chen Ling also saw at this time that behind the village primary school, someone was using a donkey cart to pull manure out with a torch.
When I got closer, I saw that it was Wang Laishun and his wife, Wang Juxiang, their second son, who were digging out feces in the school toilet.
Because Chen Ling and the others were holding torches, the other party had already seen them. There was no way around them, so they had to go up and talk to them: "Uncle Wu, Aunt Guizhen, why are you here in the middle of the night?" "Haha, the kids still have to go to school during the day, so it's not good to smoke them."
Wang Laishun said with a smile: "Look at your attitude, are you going to catch scorpions?" ”
"Yeah, it's okay after dinner. Let's go out and catch some scorpions."
Chen Ling nodded, and then glanced at Wang Juxiang in front of the donkey cart, covering his face with a towel and dressed neatly. This man was born better than Wang Jusheng. Not only was he half a head taller, he was also whiter. He had thick eyebrows, big eyes, a square face, and a square crew cut.
He glanced at Chen Ling without saying anything. He was far away from the manure truck. Chen Ling felt funny when he saw this situation: This guy must have not fertilized enough at home. Wang Laishun, an old couple I have to work hard in the middle of the night and find ways to find dung.
Manure is a treasure among treasures, and it is indispensable for farming. How can we easily let go of this free fertilizer in the school?
At this time, Liang Guizhen suddenly smiled and scolded: "Why don't Fugui stop visiting my house recently? Your fifth uncle talks about you a lot."
"Hey, it's not the end of the fifth day of May. We are harvesting wheat and visiting relatives. Am I afraid that you are all busy?" Now, your uncle is just free. If you have time, go and play cards and chess with him. When you have nothing to do, you can often go and sit at home."
"Okay, I will go and play with Uncle Wu when I have time. Let's go."
Chen Ling responded casually, then smiled and said a few polite words to Wang Laishun, and then walked home with Liu Ni'er and Xiao Sen.
But he was laughing inwardly. He had no idea what Liang Guizhen was thinking. She was just thinking about him carrying things every time he came to the door. He also disliked what happened to Chen Erzhu last time. Wang Laishun helped him go to the county seat. Call the police, but he didn't express any regrets afterwards.
It would be fine if it was simply Wang Laishun. The key point is that this woman is so annoying. Why is he so anxious to find that discomfort?
(End of this chapter)