Not all superheroes wear capes

When we booked our holiday home, nestled in the forest on a hill in Tuscany, it was its remoteness that made it attractive to us: a beautifully converted old farm overlooking the valley, only accessible via a tiny gravel path through dense forest that branches off a turn in the narrow country road. „Just us and the dogs“, we thought. „Won’t that be peaceful“.

Well, firstly, we hadn’t considered how much noise cicadas can make. Their shrill concert went on all day, and after a fortnight at our lovely holiday home, we were actually looking forward to the comparative peace and quiet of the big city.

We also had other insect company. There were fewer mosquitos than expected, about as many flies as we had thought there’d be, millipedes and centipeds, hairy caterpillars, grasshoppers large and small, and even a few huge and impressive rhinoceros beetles. There was an ant highway up the tree that I tied our hammock to. When you were lying in the hammock, a couple of them would be blown of the tree trunk and into the hammock every time the wind picked up. It was a remote, but certainly not a lonely place. We had plenty of creepy crawly company.

What we hadn’t expected, though, was to be constantly finding scorpions all over the house. We made sure to check our closed-toe shoes and beds before getting in, but we were for ever finding fierce-looking dark-brown scorpions in all kinds of unexpected nooks and crannies. On the last day, we found seven (!) of them around the house. The scorpions around the Mediterranean are usually not particularly dangerous to humans – with the exception of the aptly named „Deathstalker“ – and not aggressive unless threatened. (They do, understandably, feel very threatened if you step or sit on them, which is why we made sure to always check shoes, beds and chairs!). But they still spooked us, and I was very grateful to be travelling with a brave hero who caught and released the critters. Not all superheroes wear capes, after all. Some wear bathing trunks and flip-flops.