I've been under siege lately, at least that's the way it feels. This episode, though, was just too much.
Before Thanksgiving, my dad wanted to put the extra furnace filters up in my attic. Because I have no basement, that's where my furnace is located. He can't reach the string to pull down the stairs, though, and asked me to do it. The pull-down stairs are located in the hallway where the bedrooms and second bathroom are.
It takes a reasonable amount of force to bring the attic ladder down and I was standing almost square with it as I pulled. Something came tumbling down, narrowly missing my head.
This isn't unusual. There's insulation packed around the ladder, but that was white and what fell was dark. I stop to take a closer look and what did I see?
Scorpion!
That's right. I had a scorpion up in my attic that worked itself onto the ladder/pull-down thing and then tumbled to the carpet when I opened the hatch. The only good thing I can say is that it was already dead. That wouldn't have mattered if it had landed on my head. I'd need therapy. For years.
This was the third scorpion in just a few weeks. I'd killed one in my bathroom and another in that same hallway earlier in the month. That isn't the end of the story. After I went to bed that night, my dad said he killed a fourth one in the kitchen. Do I need to mention that the pest control company got a phone call?
I'm not sure it's a good thing that I've become so used to these things that I don't freak out any longer.
