Scorpion Horror Story

I've made no secret of the fact that I hate scorpions and I hate finding them in my house, but recently my squeamishness level went up about five notches.

Every scorpion I've found in my house has always been on the floor. Step on them with nice, strong-soled shoes to kill them and then sweep up the carcass. Theoretically, I knew they could climb walls and stuff because I'd heard stories, but I thought that maybe Georgia scorpions didn't do that or preferred not to do it or something along those lines. Still horrible to deal with, but not as bad as it could be. And then it happened.

I was in my bathroom and walked out of the water closet area and what did I see? A black thing on the top of my shower wall. At first I thought it was a centipede because that's where they like to hang out, but then I saw the claws.

Okay, so I kind of freaked out. What if it was morning? What if I was taking a shower? What if that thing fell on my head and stung me? OMG!

Luckily my dad was here. He knocked the scorpion down to the shower floor with his cane and squished it with the end of it. Situation solved. Except now I know Georgia scorpions can and will climb walls. This is the stuff of nightmares for me. The pest control company is going to have to make another visit out here.

Close Encounters

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.

Adventures With Scorpions

I'd been told there were scorpions in the Atlanta area and that some people found them in their homes, but I'd never seen one. Until last week.

It was Saturday night. Late. I walked into my bedroom and saw something on the floor between my bed and the bathroom and I went to have a look. All it took was one glance to know it was a scorpion. They're very distinct looking with their claws and that stinging tail. Mine was about an inch and a half long. I'm assured that these are "small."

I grabbed some bug spray and let him have it. He didn't react. Was he already dead? But I kept spraying, and then he'd had enough. He started to amble away. With attitude.

Panicked at the thought of having him disappear somewhere in my bedroom, I stepped on him. Luckily, I had on my thick-soled Birkenstock sandals.

To pick him up, I took a sheet and a half of paper towel, folded it all up, donned a silicone oven mitt and tossed his carcass away. This incident shook me up so much that I stayed up till after 1am, until I was too exhausted to think about it anymore.

Monday at work, everyone assured me that it was some freak thing, that scorpions inside homes were rare. I decided they must be right and wrote it off as a fluke. Then Tuesday happened.

Last Tuesday, I got up for work and saw this great big spider next to the baseboard. This was only the second big spider I'd seen in my new house and the other one had been dead. I got the vacuum cleaner, sucked this one up, and went to get some coffee. All was well. Then.

Things deteriorated when I went to rinse my coffee cup before I started to get ready for work. There was a scorpion walking across my kitchen floor!

Lesson learned from the first one, I stepped on this one right away. His tail came up, ready to sting. ::shudder:: The crunch sounded good and I got the vacuum again and sucked his body up.

Since then, I've been sleeping with the light on. They're nocturnal creatures. As I'm writing this, I'm waiting for the pest control guy to come and check out my scorpion situation. You see, scorpions are unaffected by most pesticides. There are very specific scorpion poisons and I'm hoping the exterminator will lay down the ring of death around my house so that I never have one of those things inside again.