I think I've told this story before on this forum, but it's worth retelling....
My paternal grandfather was a fisherman and construction worker all his life, with huge callused crab claws for hands and a fondness for chewing tobacco virulent enough to kill lizards and stun fish.
We were building my Dad's summer home on Man-O-War Cay, and while moving some stacked wooden shingles, I saw Pa draw his hand back suddenly and then laugh.
A yellow scorpion hung from the tip of his right index finger, waving its claws frantically. Pa pulled the tail out and threw the scorpion away - and then turned to keep moving the shingles.
When I asked him about it, he just shrugged it off: he was the kind of man who only spoke when it was necessary, and when it improved on silence.
Later that night, after supper, I asked to see his finger. There was a small hole in the callus, but no swelling or redness at all.
'I'm immune," he said, and told me how he got that way.
When Pa was about 10 years old he got 'caught short' as we say down here, while out working the fields with his father. He went to answer the strident call of nature, and as he pulled his pants down, he backed up into a sugar wasp's nest.
It was a long nest, apparently.
He never knew how many times he was stung: he never got the chance to count, since he was unconscious for the better part of two days, and his er, 'particulars' were swollen to the size of small grapefruit.
"And ever since then," he said, "I bin immune to was' stings, bee stings, scorpion stings, ant stings, jellyfish stings, you name it."
And then he smiled again, his face wrinkling like an old leather shammy. "But I sure don't recommend the method of it."