So I was killing pest anemones with this gunk called "Joe’s Juice" which is basically a solution of hot pepper and nastiness, and it dried to a crust on the outside of the syringe, and I flicked the dust off the syringe, and some of it got on the back of my wrist, and some minutes later, into my eye.

It’s possible that my eyeball will fall off in the next few hours, but after hasty flushing with water, there seems to be no long-term ill-effects. (Had I been using peppermint shrimp to control the pest bobs, this would have been much worse, as they’re much more difficult to flush and can really get a grip on the eyelid with the claws.)

On the scale of pain, (she reflected, face-down in the sink) it was significantly less than getting hot pepper suet up my nose that one time,* and a LOT less painful than the time the squirrel repellent got in my eye, which was a sort of personal ocular Waterloo, during which I ran out of swear words and vowed never to use the stuff again, partly out’ve respect for my fellow mammal, partly out of fear it would happen again.

This tells us two things.

1) The amount of nastiness required to kill a hardy denizen of a coral reef is infinitely lower than that required to momentarily inconvenience a squirrel.

2) I am a very short step away from having to wear a helmet indoors.

*IT COULD HAVE HAPPENED TO ANYONE!