midwife's muse

All creatures

I'm all itchy and I keep thinking that I can feel things crawling all over me. Why? An animal lover I had to visit today. On Monday one of my colleagues asked, really nicely, if I would pick-up one of her visits for her and, being the lovely person (!) that I am, I gladly agreed. When I went into the woman's house I had a rueful little chuckle to myself and I knew very quickly why the other midwife had passed the visit over, the house was filthy, smelly and filthy, and noisy. Yes, noisy, smelly and filthy. lovely couple but horrid environment. After I had manoeuvered around the staffordshire bull terrier which was overjoyed to see me, and closed my eyes and prayed when the pit bull stood in front of me, I promise this is the absolute truth, I sat down next to two large tanks, one on top of the other. Out of the corner of my eye I registered movement, bloody whatever's, the top tank had a huge snake in it, heaven knows how long as most of it was curled up and it was only the first three feet that had slid up the front of the glass fronted tank. I tried to act nonchalant but obviously didn't succeed as the husband started reassuring me about how friendly they are. They? Then I saw the second snake in the bottom tank, still large but not quite as impressive as it's tongue flicking friend in the top tank and with bright yellow markings. The guy told me that they are Burmese pythons and the young one is bright yellow and white because it is an albino, apparently it does have pink eyes. I left and promised myself that I would not be returning. Wrong. Today the sly midwife was off as she had been up all night at 2 homebirths and guess who I had to visit, that's it, the threatening creatures people. It was a pleasant reunion with the fearsome dogs and the large reptiles, although one of the snakes had just dirtied it's tank, apparently it smelled, I really couldn't tell as the house has so many noxious odours anyway that one snake poo obviously doesn't make a difference. So, I'm sitting there, dropping blood from the baby's foot onto the card for the Guthrie test when something flits from baby onto my leg. I continued with my blood-letting task whilst trying to ignore the fact that a super-sized flea was sitting on my trouser leg. I looked again, it had gone, gone onto my forearm whilst on the shoulder of the babygro I could see one of its relatives. I finished as quickly as I could, stood outside and shook myself and then started to feel super itchy, and I still do. When I got home I had to explain myself to Hubby as I was stripping off my clothes whilst I entered the house and by the time I had crossed the kitchen I was in a position to put all my clothes into the washing machine. I'm not sure if I should believe him but he thinks that the little bugs I had on me were baby locusts, nymphs, I think I would feel happier if they were, I don't think they bite, do they?

17.5.07 22:15