Must be Spring - Killed my first scorpion

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Well, I guess springtime has officially come to South Texas today. Walked into my bathroom a little while ago and saw my first scorpion crawling across the floor. Big bastard, too. Starting early this year.

Just as the weather starts getting warm enough to go barefoot, the damn scorpions start coming in. Now I’m going to have to check my floors and baseboards every morning and use a flashlight at night so I don’t step on one.

I know they have their natural order in this world, but after having been stung three times at night in bed, and one drop down on my back from the ceiling, I wish they would just stay the hell outside.

2

It’s no surprise they’re coming out in the spring and not during the cold winter months. After all, a Scorpion hates Sub-Zero temperatures.

Then again, South Texas has lows of 50 during the winter.

3

::shivers in revulsion::

As if there weren’t enough other perfectly sound reasons to avoid south Texas… It makes me wonder how much scorpions factor into the traditional defense of the 2nd Amendment generally associated with the southwest. (I wouldn’t want to have to do battle with scorpions armed with anything less powerful than a grenade launcher, but I’m a wuss when it comes to bugs.)

Out of curiosity, why would they come into the house just as things are beginning to warm up outside? Isn’t most of their food (presumably other insects, not your blood) outside? To the OP, isn’t there a UV-light patrol you can do at night around your house to spot them by their bioluminescence?

4

Next time I’m bemoaning my lot in life, I’ll remind myself that I don’t have to deal with scorpions.

[QUOTE=aclubs]
It’s no surprise they’re coming out in the spring and not during the cold winter months. After all, a Scorpion hates Sub-Zero temperatures.
[/QUOTE]

FLAWLESS… JOKE

5

[QUOTE=The Scrivener]
::shivers in revulsion::

As if there weren’t enough other perfectly sound reasons to avoid south Texas… It makes me wonder how much scorpions factor into the traditional defense of the 2nd Amendment generally associated with the southwest. (I wouldn’t want to have to do battle with scorpions armed with anything less powerful than a grenade launcher, but I’m a wuss when it comes to bugs.)

Out of curiosity, why would they come into the house just as things are beginning to warm up outside? Isn’t most of their food (presumably other insects, not your blood) outside? To the OP, isn’t there a UV-light patrol you can do at night around your house to spot them by their bioluminescence?
[/QUOTE]

This information came directly from our exterminator: scorpions hunt and eat only live OtherBugs. The best way to keep them out of your house is to (a) have your house sprayed regularly to get rid of the scorpions’ prey, and (b) to keep from attracting the prey in the first place by not leaving food out.

To my knowledge, and according to the same exterminator, there is no effective chemical method for exterminating the actual critter because they don’t clean themselves like other bugs would do, thereby ingesting the poison from a spray. There’s no way to “bait” them with poison either because they tend to ignore dead or inanimate things.

We have an exterminator scheduled to come once a month all year long. He sprays inside and out. Then, just before summer starts, he comes and does what he calls a “power spray” where he literally soaks the outside of the house–roof and all–with a special concentration of the stuff he uses inside.

After that, we’ll see a scorpion once in a while clinging to the ceiling or something, but we don’t have near the problem we used to have since we started paying $75.00 for that power spray.

The OP is in South Texas, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s a different species of scorpion from the one I deal with in Southeastern New Mexico. According to the poison control hotline, ours, while poisonous of course, don’t produce either enough or the right kind of venom to make an adult human sick. The biggest one I’ve ever seen was about an inch and a half from stinger to pincer.

I’ve never been stung by one, but I hear it’s like being skewered with a white-hot poker. That’s all the information I need to always wear shoes in the house, never use a towel without shaking it out, check my shoes, and various other precautionary measures. My family looks at me like I’ve lost my mind, but I haven’t been stung by one yet, and I’ve lived around them almost all my life.

6

[QUOTE=cruel butterfly]
I’ve never been stung by one, but I hear it’s like being skewered with a white-hot poker. That’s all the information I need to always wear shoes in the house, never use a towel without shaking it out, check my shoes, and various other precautionary measures. My family looks at me like I’ve lost my mind, but I haven’t been stung by one yet, and I’ve lived around them almost all my life.
[/QUOTE]

Greeeaaaat. Something else to neurose about. Crap, I’m tempted to check my shoes right now and me feet have been in them since 6 am.

Man, I hate scorpions.

7

My parents live in San Antonio, and to the best of my knowledge, have never had a scorpion in the house. For that, I am damn grateful. Their house is also fairly new, so the foundation is still in pretty good shape.

On the other hand, I was in their pool one sunny afternoon. I looked down at what I thought was a leaf sitting on the step, only it wasn’t a leaf. It was a scorpion that had drowned either trying to get a drink of water, or it’d been washed into the pool during a rainstorm. It was still dead, but I panicked, grabbed my son, and ran into the house while my dad got rid of that scorpion and another one in a different part of the pool.

According to an exterminator in East Texas, the only thing that will work on scorpions is diazinon, sprayed directly on it. Of course, my dad’s preferred method is a portable blowtorch, which does a good job of reducing scorpions to a smoking char.

Robin

8

My SIL has a monthly exterminator and she gets very few in her house. She said it’s well worth the money to be scorpion-free.

:eek: I’d die. I’d simply faint away…

9

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.

10

[QUOTE=stanger]
I have been stung in bed several times and twice felt them brush against my nose when they walked across my pillow.
[/QUOTE]

I would never sleep again.

11

A coworker of mine who lived a few miles outside San Antonio hung mosquito netting over the air conditioning vent in the ceiling in her bedroom. When I asked her why, she said it was because otherwise the scorpions would crawl into the house through the vent and fall on them in bed. :eek:

12

One of the many things I don’t miss about living in Texas. Scorpions, tarantulas, ticks, mosquitoes, and perhaps the most hated bug for its size – chiggers.

13

One more bit of information which convinces me that we should have let Mexico have Texas way back when.

14

Holy crap. I guess I can deal with the several inches long hairy centipedes we get around here. shuders

15

[QUOTE=stanger]
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.
[/QUOTE]

When it’s 2 AM and I can’t sleep tonight, I’m calling you and when you answer I’m gonna hang up, and about half an our later when you’re dozed off again, I’m calling again.

16

An inch and half from end to end? :dubious:

My parents’ place is in NE TX, and I’m reasonably sure I remember sharing the kitchen with ones that were twice that.

I like the guys, just treat 'em with respect and turf 'em outside.

17

After learning my lesson the hard way as a kid, to this day I do not put on shoes without checking them first.

18

[QUOTE=lizardling]
An inch and half from end to end? :dubious:
[/QUOTE]

They’re that small around here; it makes it all the more difficult to spot them. Plus, they blend in with our carpet, the color of which should’ve been named “Scorpion Beige”. Some bigger ones may live out in the pastures around my house, but the only ones I ever see in the house are about that size, and I only care about those that get into the house.

Because they eat other nasty critters, I don’t mind that they may be living a few yards from my front door. But that’s as close as they’re allowed to come before they suffer an untimely Death By Squashing.

Sidenote: we have some 1/2-inch wooden dowels that are about 18 inches to 2 feet long that we use to crush scorpions when they are on the ceilings. Because they’re so fast, we have to sort of sneak up on them slowly with it. When the dowel gets a few millimeters away from the bastard, we thrust it up and pivot it back and forth while the scorpion writhes in what I imagine to be extreme agony. I have to admit that it’s kinda fun.

19

[QUOTE=Turek]
When it’s 2 AM and I can’t sleep tonight, I’m calling you and when you answer I’m gonna hang up, and about half an our later when you’re dozed off again, I’m calling again.
[/QUOTE]

Why did you have to quote that portion of his post? I could have ignored it in the body of the paragraph. I never even noticed it the first time around.

whimpers

20

[QUOTE=cruel butterfly]
Sidenote: we have some 1/2-inch wooden dowels that are about 18 inches to 2 feet long that we use to crush scorpions when they are on the ceilings. Because they’re so fast, we have to sort of sneak up on them slowly with it. When the dowel gets a few millimeters away from the bastard, we thrust it up and pivot it back and forth while the scorpion writhes in what I imagine to be extreme agony. I have to admit that it’s kinda fun.
[/QUOTE]

I have no idea why this makes me laugh, but it does suit your username. :smiley: