Scorpions

From a friend in Bisbee, AZ: “It’s been the worst year for scorpions either of us have seen. I got stung, a year and a half ago… my first time. I was picking up some scrap wood in the garden shed, and BAM, the little bugger was under a piece of wood. Classic scorpion story, and 24 hours later, I was fine. Taylor had never been stung, either, but some time in April, under the covers, she moved, and one got her on her leg, three stings. She jerked away, which sent it on to my leg, where it hit twice. I threw the covers down, found it, swished it onto the floor, and hit it with my shoe. Three rattlesnakes later (out by our cat cage…one got away, but the next two didn’t), we have found scorpions in every room of the house. On walls, on rugs, under blankets, coming out of sink drains, two in light fixtures! (cooked to death). So four nights ago, another one got Taylor, under the covers, on her belly. She jerked her arm, and… near as we could count, we found five or six stings on the end of her thumb.

I had trapped one, coming out of the sink drain, by closing the stopper on its arm. Its tail went into machine gun mode, and hit the stopper ten times in a second…so that seems to be how they react to being trapped.”