CENTIPEDES
SCORPIONS
More unpleasant by far is another many-legged creature, the centipede, whose sting is said to be exceedingly painful, resembling the puncture of a hot iron, and which is not uncommon in the interior as well as in the forest. The mere touch of its minute claws, if it happens to crawl over one, is said to produce pain and inflammation. I have turned small centipedes out of the hole in a window-sill where the bolt would fall; and I remember one morning, before getting out of bed, seeing a pretty large one marching across our bedroom floor. Happily these, which are among the few noxious creatures we have in Madagascar, are not very common. Another unpleasant visitor is the scorpion, which is rather apt to get into a house which has much stonework in the basement; we frequently killed small ones about an inch long at Antanànarìvo. Examples twice that size are found in the Vàvavàto district; while on the shores of Bèmbatòka Bay (N.W.Co.) scorpions five inches long occur, and Captain Owen says that they may be found, one or more, under almost every stone. He states a curious fact, if indeed it is one—viz. that the most destructive enemy to the scorpion is the common mouse.[15]
“Ao ny àndro mamanala,
Sakambino ao an-àla;
Raha mandeha mita rano,
Mba hazòny sy tantano”;
etc.
“There are the chilly days,
Sustain them in the forest;
When they ford the rivers,
O uphold and guide them,”
etc.
Ala, at the end of the first two lines, is the native word for “forest,” and the native word translated here “chilly” is from the damp and cold woods.
[15] Here I may notice that, in addition to the above-named unpleasant inhabitants of Madagascar, we have had, within the last eighteen years, a most unwelcome accession to the insect pests, by the introduction of the chigoe, or “jigger,” which was brought by the Senegalese black troops employed in the French conquest of 1895. This minute flea does not jump, but runs over one’s body, and burrows under the skin, chiefly in the feet, but also sometimes in the hands, where it causes intolerable itching, and, if not speedily removed with a needle, becomes in four or five days full of eggs, and causes sores and inflammation. It is a great pest to the Malagasy, the great majority of whom go barefoot. But those who have boots and shoes on get no exemption from the attacks of the jiggers.