There are scorpions, but they’re usually out in the desert, and I haven’t heard of too many in people’s houses. But you can never be too careful (where’s that devious grin at?)
PM sent.
Oh, I know the scorpions exist, I’ve just never, ever dealt with them inside - and that’s in some of the most crumbling homes in small towns.
Although, it is true. I was once almost attacked by the scary black and white paper scorpion lurking under my bed, but that was in Kenya. And my roommates laughed their asses off.
PM answered!
Don’t you have cats? Aren’t they supposed to be on centipede duty?
Seriously, call an exterminator. Pay for the service to come out and spray every three months or so.
At my old house we had these evil creatures. They loved to run across the carpet as we were watching TV at night. I swear I saw my wife levitate when she saw one run in front of her. They would also hang on the underside of our coffee table or ceiling, ready to drop on you when you least expected it.
The worst was one morning when I was getting ready for work. I get up at 4 AM and usually don’t turn on the lights so I won’t disturb anyone. I walked into the bathroom to take a shower and felt a crunch/squish under my bare foot. I turned on the light and found one this horror crushed and smeared on the bottom of my foot. It was still twitching and I had bug guts and legs between my toes. I think I scrubbed my foot for 10 minutes. After that I made sure the lights were on.
Like the one I used to live in at the end of Reservoir street in Socorro? :smack: I think crumbling was an understatement, though, as the roof was literally a foot lower in the Southwest corner than its opposite, and not by design.
Personally I’d rather have the bugs than the pesticides. Maybe something natural like vanilla or mint would keep them away?
This would make a cool video game.
Oh yeah, that sounds an awful lot like some of the houses I spent time in when I was younger. Only mine had cracks between the floors and walls. Not small cracks.
And so many other problems.
Wait - paper like as in origami, or is there a species of scorpion called paper scorpions? A quick google search neither confirms nor denies. Or do they *eat *paper or something?
Well, unless they crawl into your house through the overhead vents and fall onto your bed during the night. As happened to a coworker of mine in Texas. For some strange reason, she and her husband then proceeded to swathe all the air vents in mosquito netting.
::shudder::
Sorry, I thought my little joke was clear.
I have a very, very slight depth perception problem. It’s slight enough that I didn’t even know it until I was an adult. Not long after that I went to Kenya.
I am walking toward my bed when I see this huge-ass scorpion on a piece of paper under my bed. And I cannot for the life of me tell if it’s real or printed onto the piece of paper, due to the angle and the aforementioned slight depth perception problem. So I grabbed one of my roommates, explained the situation and asked her to look under my bed, since I sure as hell wasn’t about to stick my hand under there and find out the fucker’s real.
She takes a quick glance and busts out laughing. Turns out our third roommate’s father is a prankster, and had printed out a life size and coloured scorpion and mailed it to her - suggesting she stick it in someone’s sleeping bag. Apparently the third roommate had shown the piece of paper to the second roommate, they rolled their eyes at this suggestion, set the picture with the rest of their letters and promptly forgot about it. Until about a month later, when the wind had blown it under my bed. So her father got half of what he wanted. Someone had wondered about that thing under their bed, but no flip-outs as I’m sure he was hoping for. Just a minor, “Um… A, could you check that out for me, please?”
My roommates laughed their asses off. But turn about is fair play, you see…
The tiny snake that hid in my backpack was real. And they flipped out royally at it. It was tiny, though. My professors said it was a “Blind Snake”, but I’ve never googled that.
If it makes you feel any better, weather doesn’t deter them. Those evil things also inhabit my basement in Montreal.
Crosses “spelunking in Venezuela” off of list of Things To Try Someday.
This could actually be good for you. I was once a tiny bit afraid of bugs until I became…an exterminator for a few years. Now, after picking some of the most frightening and disgusting bugs in N. America out of my hair I have absolutely no fear of insects. The shortened lifespan due to the pesticides I was exposed to is sooo worth it when I can pick up a cockroach at a party and amaze everyone at my bravery(they won’t shake my hand ever again though).
Sorry, I haven’t kept up with this thread, but I"m just chiming in to say I totally just mutilated a house centipede. St. Francis and Agua Fria, if you were wondering. At least this time, I knew its name before I sent the little guy into the Abyss.
ETA: I can still see its guts. It’s not twitching anymore.