It happened on my migration back to Montana from Mexico. I had just finished a surf session in a famous surf break, Scorpion Bay, near the small fishing town of San Juanico. Not much of a town, not even cell service. I was walking out of the water with a local gringo surfer, whom the Mexican kids nicknamed Abuela (grandma). Abuela is a 200 pounds burly dude, only after the accident, I understood why the nickname. As we were walking out a rocky bottom, I felt the obvious sensation of a gnarly sting. I yelped like a dog. Couldn’t have been a stingray on a rocky bottom, what then?
Abuela, with a worried expression, looked at me and said “I hope you didn’t step on a sculpin fish!” “Sculpin fish?” Has anyone heard of sculpin fish sting? By the time I got out of the water I could barely walk. Abuela said “leave your board here, I’ll bring it to your camp” The last 100 yards to my camp I was crawling the pain was so intense. I saw the three dorsal fin pricks on the bottom of my foot. It was a sculpin fish indeed. Also called California Scorpion Fish, with a poison that it’s so potent that it’s compared to a rattlesnake.
I have been stung by stingrays a few times, we all know how painful that is, many would agree a 10 out of 10. That was a kids game in comparison. The scorpion fish was a 15 out 10. I stuck my foot in unbearably hot water, to alleviate the pain like you do with a stingray, but nothing. I just couldn’t wrap my head around how something could hurt so much and how I could go through it, I literally panicked. Should I scream? Bite something? Hit my chest like a mountain gorilla? What in the hell am I going to do with myself?
My father’s military-style child-raising, where we would get whipped extra if we cried, took that out of me, so I couldn’t even cry. I was about to try the mountain gorilla option when Abuela showed up. He was on a much too small ATV, with a grocery box for a back seat. He had googled everything about scorpionfish stings and that was my ambulance and my driver. I had never been so happy to see a 200-pound man on a small ATV.
Off we went the two mountain gorillas, in search of the town’s only doctor. Abuela drove like you see in movies, bouncing down the track, I held tight to the grocery basked hoping that it wouldn’t snap.
The clinic was a tiny dilapidated building with one more dilapidated door. “CERRADO” handwritten on the door. Abuela wasn’t discouraged it was closed, slammed on the throttle, and off we went in a dust cloud. He ripped across a few blocks and screeching around corners and like a miracle, an ambulance appeared parked in front of a public building. A bunch of people outside waiting in line with dogs. Sometimes the bad luck turns good. It happened to be the one day a month that doctors and nurses showed up from the bigger town of Insurgents to spay dogs and give them rabies vaccines. Don’t ask me why. Maybe shortage of vets? How did Abuela know?
They dragged me into a room, sat me on a table with a bunch of dog stuff on it and the nurse asked me what had happened. I calmly told her that I had stepped on a sculpin fish. She looked at me, shook her head and said, no way. She continued by saying that I wasn’t in enough pain, that the local fishermen when they come in for a sculpin fish sting are crying, screaming and kicking. Obviously, she couldn’t feel my pain but mostly she couldn’t see my dad looming over me, with his whip raised, ready to whip me over my bare ass if I even tried to cry or act hurt.
Because I wasn’t in pain, in their book, they took their time. Filled in a pile of paperwork, like age, weight, eight, breed, pedigree, religion, status, profession, hobbies, favorite music, favorite chew toy, you name it. I was dying and finally said it. Can anyone look at my foot? They peaked up from their records, shuffled their way over me, and for the first time saw my foot that was swollen the size of a prosciutto ham. They looked at the three obvious sting marks and then at me incredulous. Are you an alien? Why aren’t you feeling pain?
They gave me some medicine, maybe Rimadyl, but in all honestly it’s all a blur. It took all I had not to pass out. Abuela raced me back to camp and the next 6 to 8 hours was absolute hell of pain. It was over a month before I could walk on that foot and several months before I could run.
I found out later that Abuela helps with the whole spaying dog program and vaccination and rescue of stray dogs and is just a good man. I am sure the kids nicknamed him Abuela, because of his kind, nurturing nature. He stopped by the following day surrounded by 7 dogs, to see how I was doing. Are they your dogs? No, yes, well… This one… This man just loves dogs.
He told me his story. Abuela lived a glamorous, Hollywood-style life, training skating bulldogs for the show-movie business. He was the dad of Guinness world record holder, Tilmann the skating dog, the fastest skating bulldog in the world. And that was done making turns and fully in control of the board. Abuela traveled the world with his dogs and made a fortune. He was still heartbroken and devastated from losing, at this point, all of his bulldogs, a tragic, sad story. He just couldn’t do it anymore and started rescuing and fostering Mexican stray dogs and surfing. And there you go, that is the story of Abuela and the scorpionfish.