Scorpion Wars, Episode 395

In our last episode of the Scorpion Wars, our noble heroes had battled their nemesis, the scorpion horde to a standstill, cold winter weather (relatively cold winter weather) had temporarily created a false sense of security in our noble heroes. They had become lax in manning the bastions of their defense and now.... on with our story.

When I was child growing up in the mostly desert Salt River Valley, we had every imaginable bug except scorpions. One of those things the Chamber of Commerce would like you to ignore, Phoenix is a very, very buggy place. Exterminators do a lively business and most residents have their homes sprayed regularly. The most common offenders are ants, crickets, cockroaches and silver fish. With a sprinkling of more exotic species and varieties thrown in, like earwigs, black widow spiders, brown recluse spiders and even more interesting crawly things. I had not seen a scorpion until one day, while turning over rocks in the desert, there was a scorpion, hiding down in the dirt.

Now let me say, I do not like scorpions. I do not like bugs very much at all, especially at night and especially when they land on you suddenly. One day, while living up on the Colorado Plateau, we had a "Child of the Earth" land on our screen door, which freaked us all out, anyway, to get back to scorpions, we now have scorpions. They are a fact of life. We have probably killed hundreds in the past three years alone, all of them in our house or on our lot. Scorpions do not respond to poison. They can live without air, they can live without water, they are closest thing to eternal that exists on the earth. We use glue boards to trap them and a vacuum to get the ones we see. The vacuum has the air go through an impeller, which is highly impractical for cleaning but good for bugs.

It is now the time of year to start to see them again. We will start the annual battle of the ultra-violet light (scorpions fluoresce in black light) and we will once again watch for their straw to brown colored bodies on our walls, ceilings, carpets, anyplace. The worst is finding some scorpion carrying all of the little babies on its back, yuk.