My stint in the Heart of Texas is teaching me much. This week I concentrated on the fauna. Actually I had no choice since the fauna seemed awfully intent on studying me at close range.

Fortunately, insects in Texas are so large and numerous that one seldom has time to become too concerned over any one bug. If you but wait a moment a larger one will come along and gobble it up, thus relieving your fears even while supplanting them with fresh ones.

I'm learning about the nature of scorpions which is genrerally unpleasant; their nature, not the learning.

In my travels I have managed to work up warm and protective feelings for most of God's creatures about the planet. So far, scorpions have managed to elude any such tender notions of stewardship. They seem to do business only while mad and do not appear to close down the shop.

At the risk of sounding blashphemous I'm not sure God knows about scorpions. I am certain that the Devil does not know about them for if he did he would keep them all in Hell where he could fill everybody's pockets with them to break the ice at parties.

The scorpion manages to offend on so many levels. He charges at full scamper causing obvious and immediate concern for your well-being in the path of such unprovooked aggression. Adding insult to the prospective injury, he does this while twisting his swishing hind end up over his head so he can point and waggle it at you.

My take on his motives for such a rude display are that he probably knows his actions will cause him to be stepped upon and he wants your last thoughts to be about the lack of esteem and low regard in which you were held by he and his tribe. I think they figure if they aren't going to get to sting you at least they will have succeeded in momentariy making you feel badly about yourself.

I was sitting at my computer minding my own business when one of the little critters took exception to my presence (or my syntax) and charged my stockinged foot from eleven o'clock low.

A Texan accustomed to such sorties explained that he was probably a Berserker bound for Valhalla who was posturing himself for immortality in one desperate charge. Apparently a scorpion's idea of spiritual currency is to go out while dislodging a large and objectionable pest from his garden. I was happy to assist him in his quest for martyrdom.

So far the score stands at; Me=9, Scorpions=0. I hope to continue pitching a shutout.

I am going to check my luggage carefully before returning however.

St. Patrick is fondly remembered for having driven the snakes out of Ireland.

I would prefer not to be remembered as the man who introduced scorpions to Tennessee.