If any old-timer sarnothi heard this, they’d be like “You’re all too soft these days. In my time when your baby bit you, you just dealt with it. You didn’t even feel it after the first few times!”
If any old-timer sarnothi heard this, they’d be like “You’re all too soft these days. In my time when your baby bit you, you just dealt with it. You didn’t even feel it after the first few times!”
That’s how you build up a tolerance! Or nerve damage.
Wait, that’s a good question – are Sarnothi affected by their own venom?
Evidently, yes! Or rather, they’re affected by other sarnothi’s venom.
Sarnothi are resilient against the venom of other sarnothi, but not truly immune.
However, baby’s venom isn’t very strong so after a few bites their parents can usually build up a resilience.
Now, you can blame cultural differences, but its really NOT cool to hand someone something without telling them BEFOREHAND that they might need to inject an antidote because they are going to get poisoned by carrying it.
Not everyone is good with needles, for one thing, plus who knows what kind of medical iteractions venom and antivenom could have with various medications/health conditions.
I suspect he’s trying to keep Todd preoccupied because he doesn’t want him hearning whatever is coming next, but I could be wrong. (And that makes it worse, not better, if right.)
we occasionally use our own babies as bioweapons here
Todd has tattoos. It is unlikely that, as many as he has, he is *that* bad with needles. I’d be more worried about him not knowing how to properly self-inject.
In our universe, how is antivenin administered? Sub-Q? IM? Nasal spray? In my experience, sub-Q is pretty straightforward, IM is a bit more complicated.
Even with sub-q, you need (or at least, I needed) someone to go over it with you first. How to clean the area, how you know when you’ve pushed enough, how long to hold (some of those are effected by the type of needle). I’ll let it go for the sake of comic and pacing, but IRL, I wouldn’t feel ready to inject anything without going over specifics for it, even if I’ve self-injected similar things before.
One has to assume the baby doesn’t get much social interaction if she’s venomous and still biting people. I honestly don’t know kw why he’d even ask Todd to hold the kid. Kind of ridiculous.
Id have been pissed off about this.
He didn’t, he asked Todd to watch her. Todd’s the one who decided to pick her up.
“still biting people”??? That baby was hatched in the winter, and it is now summer. She is probably less than 6 months old. STILL biting? The last kid that bit me was 2 years old, and he continued biting people for another year.
Whoever raised that kid did a bad job then.
Trypanophobia is the phobia of hypodermic needles. I have it, it’s horrible, I come close to a panic attack every time I have to get an injection or have blood drawn. I can’t even WATCH people getting a shots.
But I can watch tattooing being done and even fantasize about what my first tattoo will be and not have any anxiety. All this to say, just because Todd has tats, doesn’t mean he’s good with injections.
Reminds me of the time a college classmate picked me up to babysit her daughter(s), drove me all the way to her house (with, IIRC, said daughters in the car), did all the usual things, and then on the way out the door informed me that the younger daughter had Chicken Pox.
Thankfully, I’d had it as a kid (back when it was considered pretty normal to expose your kids to it deliberately, I think) — but my brother, who’s had stronger reactions to certain illnesses and such, had had it TWICE (meaning we weren’t sure if he could catch it again), and of course my classmate had no idea if I was immune or if any of our family was immuno-compromised.
He did tell him beforehand. Or at least he tried.
Pohl asked Todd to look after “the littles” over his shoulder while he was occupied with the girls, and in the very next breath told him to FIRST go to the fridge.
Pohl didn’t hand the baby to Todd, rather Todd immediately picked up the baby before Pohl could get out the next sentence. Probably outside Pohls sightline, given how Pohl words it.
… This brings up a great point…. Do we need to start now with setting up batches of Selkie antivenom? I mean having a decent stockpile might be something to consider for when she starts dating.
It could also be the assumption or forgetfulness due to Todd being the father of Selkie. Assumption that he might already know about this type of thing due to being her father, even if he didn’t have her at that age. Forgetfulness due to teaching about echo things, so the brain might just default to assuming that everyone is Sarnothi until after he had picked up the child, even though the brain should have known better. I don’t know when in this part of the conversation Todd picked up Tai Li, but it could also be that it is hard to remember to say or do other things while maintaining echo stuff. It might be that Pohl was so focused on the girls and echo things that he didn’t even realize that Todd had picked up Tai Li until it was too late.
Same college classmate I mentioned in other comment once took me with her family to Wild Waves. I didn’t think to bring sunscreen because I’m used to my parents packing some with me in mind. I take SPF 65+ because I burn super easily and have already had a major sunburn that kept me in bed for a week — she pulled out something like SPF 15.
At that point I realized that hey, visibly Hispanic people might in fact be used to packing light sunscreen instead of armor-plating, even when they’re planning to make a day of it.
I forget how we solved the problem. Probably bought overpriced sunscreen at the park itself. But there’s a lot that can slip your mind when you’re used to thinking certain things are normal and then run across people for whom they’re not.
Nom nom nom, bite the pink tasty thing.
If sarnothi babies are anything like human babys, they explore any object by putting it in their mouth. It seems to be a combination of possible teething, “is it food?” and the fact that their mouths are more sensitive to explore textures, etc at that age than their fingers and hands (don’t have the motion control to stroke or squeeze that well yet).
“I know this person! I like person! I bite this person! Hehe, person makes funny noises and we run around like ‘whee’ when I bite, this is a fun game.”
Saw an AITA entry where every time the infant bit the mom, the dad would laught his head off — thus absolutely training the kid to *deliberately* and *frequently* bite the mom. What a [BLEEP].
Does he need to find a vein or is intramuscular fine?
Honestly wondering that myself!
If memory serves it depends on the venom…. I say on a jellyfish as a kid and they had to inject the anti venom straight into my butt. However with a stronger venom you might have to be intravenous. I honestly don’t remember. At least it’s good that there is a doctor present just in case though.
I had to read Pohl’s instructions several times before realizing that he talks about disposable syringes and not some person using sharps (to modify musical notes?).
Given that Pohl is a doctor, I assume that sharp is an actual informal term for syringe, although my favorite online-dictionary blanks on this.
Yes sharps is an informal term for syringes, scalpel blades and anything that can draw blood. Iif you look in a doctors office, they usually have a red bin with the words “Sharps Container “
I think one improvement would be “one-use sharps” instead of “one use sharps” — the potential confusion is two-pronged since “one” could be a noun or “some one” a typo for “someone”, and “use” can be a verb. The intended meaning requires the construction to be an adjective, and right now it doesn’t read that way.
So Pohl keeps sharps in his flat?
It’s only natural.
This could become a major pun thread.
I can only make a minor contribution.
Such a happy baby smile in last panel. 😊
Cut to Pohl, Selkie and Amanda reenacting the overdose scene from Pulp Fiction.