Fried scorpion is a traditional side dish in our family, and it is popular to eat scorpions in the Yimeng Mountain area.
The blessed Yimeng Mountain gave its people many special things to support their families and allow them to multiply.
The scorpion of Yimeng Mountain has 10 legs, which is unique in the country and even in the world.
The 10-legged scorpion is called the full scorpion, and the others are brothers. Ordinary scorpions only have 8 legs, only our Yimeng Mountain scorpions have 10 legs, which should be the existence of "nobles" in the scorpion family. The scorpion with two more legs seemed to be strong enough to kill all the other scorpions in a second.
Mengyin County has also developed a special wine made with scorpions, called the full scorpion.
When I was a child, my father bought bran wine from the village commissary, the alcohol content was only 38 degrees, I once drank half a bowl of water, not even a little strength, full of only bitter taste. The 8-year-old girl drank half a pound of chaff and was not drunk!
But the father's habit, buy back and do not drink directly, he likes to get a whole scorpion into it, generally are the big male scorpion, because the old mother scorpion is reluctant to sell.
When he released the scorpion, his father did not dare to put more, and only put one at a time. But this little scorpion, after two days of soaking in the wine, will make the wine gush. The same wine, soaked in scorpions, the average person can only drink more than 2 or more.
Full of scorpions, not only medicinal herbs, but also the only source of pocket money when I was a child! In the 80s, an "old mother" could sell for 2 cents, and if my father wanted to go to the market, I would take the scorpion I caught and let my father sell it on the market for some snacks that I wanted.
I miss the time when I was a child, and after the summer vacation, after doing my homework, I would clamor for my brother to take me to the mountain to "lift the scorpion".
I remember one summer, it had just rained heavily, and after the sun came out, the weather was particularly steamy, but the heat was the last time of the "scorpion lifting".
My brother and I, a 12-year-old and a 10-year-old, carried a small canned bottle, a tweezer made of chopsticks, and a hook used to burn the stove in winter, and went up the mountain to "lift scorpions."
"Lifting a scorpion" is a hard job, but also a technical job.
In the summer, scorpions cool under the stones, and if you want to find them, you must remove the stones. And not every stone has a scorpion underneath, so this is really a hard work, you need to keep moving the stone.
At most, I found 3 big old female scorpions under a big rock. It wasn't breeding season, it was hard to come across, and I remember how excited I was.
The scorpion has a long barb-like spine on its tail, which is the scorpion's only offensive weapon. But don't underestimate the tail needle of this scorpion, stung by this thing, the light will also be puffy, and the heavy ones will have to go to the hospital for treatment.
But I myself am naturally gifted and immune to scorpion poison needles. If I was stung by a scorpion, it would just be like a needle prick, but if my brother was stung by a scorpion, immediately, in a few minutes, the stung place would swell up, and for several days I would not dare to touch it or dare not move.
Catching scorpions is a technical job, and when the stone is lifted, the scorpion will want to run. At this time, you can't hurry up, because the scorpion is too fragile and too eager to start. Puncture the shell of the scorpion, and it will die immediately.
If there is a scorpion under the stone, there are two situations when you lift the stone.
One is that the scorpion is motionless, thinking you haven't found it, and curls up there, at which point you can gently pinch the scorpion's tail with the prepared tweezers. Only the tail can be pinched, the scorpion will shatter when touched elsewhere, and only by pinching the tail can the scorpion be caught correctly.
Also, after the stone was lifted, the scorpion wanted to run at great speed. At this time, don't panic, as long as you blow hard at the scorpion, the scorpion will obediently stop in place and then clamp it up with tweezers.
On that trip up the mountain, I caught more than 30 old female scorpions, and I was satisfied, because it could sell for close to 10 yuan and buy a lot of delicious snacks.
But the weather was too hot, it was too sleepy at the time, and my brother and I wanted to be in the shade of the trees, cool for a while, but I didn't expect to fall asleep after a while, and I was also tired.
What I didn't expect was that after sleeping until most of the night, all the men and women in the village came out to look for the two of us. When I opened my eyes and saw that there were stars in the sky, I was terrified.
In the distance, the shouts of the villagers were heard, and they were even more frightened, and they felt that they were in trouble.
In fact, our mountains here are not high, and there are no large wild animals, but after all, we are children, parents are not at ease, the people in the village are not at ease, and it has just rained, and the mountains are indeed dangerous.
What was even more frustrating was that when I returned home, I found that the more than 30 scorpions I caught in half a day were suffocated in canned bottles, and the scorpions were not worth much when they died. I cried all night that night, saying that I was distressed by the scorpion, but I was actually scared.
After junior high school, I grew to 1.5 meters tall, put on a skirt, tied up my braids, and said goodbye to scorpions.
But Yimeng Mountain's full scorpion has become famous, from the beginning of 98 yuan a pound, then 120, and then 240, until now 600-800 yuan a pound.
My brother and father, like many in the village, joined the scorpion-catching army.
These people have also changed the way they catch scorpions, they "take the scorpion", the brother spent more than 600 yuan, bought two sets of special "light scorpion" flashlights, the two people can basically return the cost in one night.
The most time, my brother and father took 2 pounds of scorpions one night, and they sold 1500 yuan at that time, and they were very excited.
But our locals have a custom of giving local scorpions, every year after the autumn, everyone will not look at the scorpion, not that the scorpion is gone, but during this time the scorpion will "descend".
A big old mother will carry 15-20 small scorpions on her back. Newborn scorpions, which are white, lie on their mother's back and "nibble" on their mother for nutrition.
In fact, I still don't believe in this, but the newborn scorpion is on the back of the mother. And the way scorpions breed is also very strange, it is said that the old mother scorpion will crack a slit on the back, and the newborn scorpion will crawl out of the crack on the mother's back.
They have no predatory ability, do not eat, and when they are hungry, they will eat the back of their mother, until the last whole old female scorpion is eaten by them.
I've occasionally seen an old female scorpion with a small scorpion on her back, but I've never caught a scorpion like this. The villagers will also consciously let go of such an old female scorpion.
About 14-18 years, the scorpion was popular in our place, and more than 30 people in the village had to go out to take pictures of the scorpion in one night. They go farther and farther, sometimes going out for more than 60 miles.
The number of scorpions is limited, the local light is less and less, the "scorpion" men go farther and farther, the farthest, the father rode a motorcycle out of more than 100 miles, all the way to the side of Xintai Lotus Mountain.
I also worried about the question, will scorpions be "extinct" in this way? My mother told me that it should not be, and her reason was very strange, "Have you ever seen your father take a picture of an old female scorpion with a cub?" ”
Fortunately, in these years, farmers have become richer, and fewer and fewer people "look at the scorpion", after all, the black sky and midnight are not a good livelihood.
But there is a problem that has to be faced, the wild scorpion is indeed getting less and less, not only people "light scorpions", a large number of pesticides are used, although the environment is getting better and better, but I feel that it is a bit of a sense of silence, not only less scorpions, grasshoppers are also less, grasshoppers are not so dense.
In 19 years, Yiyuan County issued a policy that more than 10 full-fledged scorpions that illegally profited would be punished. "Follow the scorpion" and stop. The people in the mountains don't have to catch scorpions, and when they realize it's wrong, they consciously stop doing it.
The guy my brother bought for "Taking the Scorpion" is still so complete, but it has been abandoned for several years.
Over the years, we have worked hard to develop cash crops, yellow peach has become a pillar industry, from May to October all the villagers have to work in the peach orchard non-stop, they have long forgotten the "scorpion" as a livelihood.
Once, I would be at my mother's house, and occasionally I heard my brother say that scorpions are also a kind of life, and they should not be too "cruel" to them, otherwise they will be "retaliated". Although, I don't understand, how scorpions "retaliate" against people, but my brother is probably right.
In the past, a person in the village who took pleasure in catching hares and pheasants had a cerebral infarction last year, and he was half-body-deaf, and the grandson of the butcher's family could not speak when he was 8 years old, and the people who caught yellow eels in the following cages and had fun with crucian carp also had a car accident, lying in the hospital for half a year, disabled.
Probably the people in the mountains, with their simple cognition, behind the seeming madness, everyone has a bottom line in their hearts.
It is gratifying that we have completely sealed the mountain here, and even the sheep on the mountain will not be allowed to be released.
Last year, after the heavy rain, I also had a sudden idea and dragged my husband to the mountain to collect mushrooms. But we ran three mountains, and the mushrooms we picked up were not enough for a meal.
Come back and ask my mother-in-law, what is going on?! But the mother-in-law but her own understanding, she told me, the mountain is sealed, the more important thing is that now people do not go to the mountain to "shoot firewood", the woods are paved with dry grass leaves, the fungus fell on top of it, can not touch the ground, naturally there will be no mushrooms growing.
My mother-in-law is more than 60 years old, she has not been to the mountain for nearly ten years, but like all the people in the mountains, she has grown into a part of the mountain, looking at this mountain, looking at this water, just like looking at her own children, every change she looks at in her own eyes, and like looking at her mother, may not have communicated for many years, she can know the change of "mother"!
#记录乡村之美 #