Having an exterminator come out and spray the inside and outside of the house does help some, cuts down on how many get in the house. They seem to come in either when it has been very hot and dry outside for a while or it has been very wet.
I have taken all the usual precautions; sealing around doors and windows, keeping plants and mulch away from around the house, but some still get in. I live a bit out in the country, so there are always some about compared to in town.
There isn’t much that will kill them short of direct physical force. The exterminators use some kind of poison that effects their digestive system, but they often make it into the house to die. I kind of hate going this route because the main victim is the spiders we have around here and I get along with them just fine and hate to see them killed off.
Every morning I will walk around the house and check the baseboards and floors and it’s not unusual to find three or four a week. Several times a year I will be watching TV and see them walk across the carpet, their shadow from the TV screen giving them away. My buddy, who goes around barefoot all year, has often had them walk across his toes while he sits at his computer. I have been stung in bed several times and twice felt them brush against my nose when they walked across my pillow.
Me, I always wear shoes and never leave them on the floor. Never let any clothing or bedding touch the floor either.
Some of them get into the house through the doorways, particularly a sliding glass door from the patio that is hard to completely seal. Most of them crawl up the outside brick walls of the house and get into the attic. There is enough poison up there to kill an army, but it hasn’t slowed them down much. They come down in the middle of the house through or around the central heat/AC unit and can usually be found close to this area. I have a glass globe around a light in the hallway that I have to empty each year because several scorpions will crawl down from the attic into the globe and get trapped.
The last couple of years hasn’t been too bad - maybe only a dozen scorpions each year. But usually it is April or so before I see any, so this one is kind of early.
Oh, and the ones we have around here are about three inches long and their sting is like a white hot wire. I can tell you that it will wake you up from a deep sleep REAL quick like. All you can do is apply some ice to numb it a bit and wait the pain out.
Yea, I hate the bastards.