Lunch Break in the sun

It's still windy but the sun is keeping us warm. We are waiting for our food to rehydrate. Two days ago we met a hiker named Elijah. He would have pAssed us by but DG said something conversational ("Hi"). She then asked if that was his trail name to which he replied, "No". DG offered Moses as his new name and he wasn't impressed. He said all of the names people hAd tried on him were stupid. Then he told us ( by way of conversation)  that last night a scorpion had crawled into his sleeping bag. DG Asked whAt he had done with it and he said it was in his pack. He had put it in his ibuprofen container. Now he had DG's interest. "What are you going to do with it"? He said he didn't know. Then he related that he was an amateur entymologist. How nice for him that a scorpion chose him. By now DG is trying to find a way to save this creature (entymologist be damned). She offered him 20 dollars to release the scorpion and then he could have the trail name of Jesus. He didn't want that name. He said he wanted to check out his spider which  DG had started calling Fred Astaire for some bizzare reason. Elijah suddenly asked if we wanted to see it. Yes from everyone including Sochi who had just joined us. The trail can be quite the thorough fare. Elijah takes off his pack, locates his ibuprofen bottle and opens it before 8 sets of peering eyes. Fred was yellow. Elijah disturbed him and his tail curled. A tiny droplet of poison appeared at the end of his tail. Photos were taken. DG keeps pressing him to let it go. "If you were a spider would you want out" DG asked Elijah. Elijah said he'd want out but he did not release him. Then Elijah asked if we had ever seen a sun spider that has a head that looks like a horse. No, no one had. Out came another specimen jar. He told us not to open this one because this spider can jump and bite the hell out of your face. We peered through the opaque container and saw some kind of deformed head. He brought out his last specimen which was a dead Jerusalem cricket. This cricket had black and yellow stripes like a bee. He needed to take  bugs home, to analyze them; identify them, pin them; collect them. All his classifying info was at home. He couldn't do it in the field hence his need for specimens.

DG preoccupied with the scorpion asked Elijah if it would die. Elijah had fed him a cricket and he had put air holes in the pill bottle. Elijah had himself a pet. DG asked him why he didn't feed him the dead cricket and he said it was too big. At this point we were all informed that scorpions had two mouths. They open up their jaws and another mouth comes out. Oh...DG gave Elijah the trail name " Scorpion". It was well received. The question is should DG have snatched the pill container out of Scorpion's hands and set him free? When is it appropriate to interfere? Did this spider now belong to Scorpion? If someone else had found this spider what would have happened? Instant death? Isn't all life precious? Apparently Scorpion had been bitten twice by rattlesnakes and had been bitten by every kind of spider. He had already had pet scorpions that he played with and that rode on his shoulders. Scorpion had been home schooled. He didn't have his GED. He wanted to study entymology. After doing the PCT he was going to start the journey to get what he wanted. The PCT will become his proving ground. He had already lost a hundred pounds in preparation for the hike. DG stopped worrying about Fred Astaire but the ethics of it all kept her thoughts alive for days. She was not willing to take on Scorpion's karma. She had enough of her own.