During the refurbishing of Starhaven, my husband and I traveled back and forth between Tucson and Sacramento. This involved either a two-day-each-way caravan with four dogs in the Toyota Tundra or, for shorter trips, a flight from Sac International to Tucson and back. The holes in the wall took months to repair (a story for another day). As a result, when we arrived at Starhaven, we would often find unwelcome visitors in the corners of our ceilings or hiding at baseboard level. I am a wanna-be entomologist*, so most of the time these encounters were an opportunity for me to drag out the field guides and have some fun. On a couple of occasions, our visitors were of the Centriroides exilicauda or bark scorpion clan. The bark scorpion is the species most commonly encountered in the home.
On one of our trips, a scorpion slithered out of a magazine I’d intended to read on the plane. As a result, I instituted a scorpion hunt at the beginning of each visit to our Tucson home. Scorpions glow in the dark. Upon arriving at Starhaven, I would take a black-light (UV) flashlight (which can be purchased from just about any hardware store in Tucson) and tour the house, examining crevices and other places scorpions might hide. I would sometimes discover a scorpion and take it outside.
I had warned my husband not to leave his bags on the floor, but (as is often the case) he needed to learn by up-close-and-personal experience. A week after one of our trips, my husband grabbed a t-shirt from the closet in our Sacramento home and put it on only to feel, as he describes it “bam, bam, bam—three jolts from an uzi”. Apparently a hitchhiker had accompanied us home in my husband’s suitcase. My husband ripped the shirt off, threw it on the floor, and raced to the hospital where the doctors searched Wikipedia for a treatment plan (there are no bark scorpions in Sacramento). A little numbness was the only symptom and a simple dose of benadryl was all that was necessary to deal with this non-life-threatening encounter.
When I got home I heard all of the details, including the fact that the nasty fellow was loose in our bedroom. In the middle of an uncomfortable night on a twin bed in the guest room, my husband, for whatever reason, solo-missioned it upstairs where he found the interloper in the bathroom. Trapped and dispatched quickly, the fellow was destined to become a paperweight.
*Scorpions are not insects, therefore I use the term “entomologist” loosely.
For more on scorpions see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_bark_scorpion
Yet another scorpion story: http://news.yahoo.com/us-man-stung-scorpion-commercial-flight-180744819.html
Check out the trailer for a 1950’s horror movie called, “The Black Scorpion”. http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1441596441/
Note: scorpion stings can be lethal to small children, people in ill health, or individuals allergic to the venom. Contact a physician immediately if you are stung.
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