Scorpion Patrol

So I got stung by a scorpion.  Twice.  In bed.  But it was no big deal.  No jittery vision. No tingling mouth.  No pain at the sting sites.  Indeed, the pain was gone from both sites within about 10 minutes.  Whew!  I was fortunate and I thanked God for protecting me from what is normally a very painful experience.  It happened two weeks ago, around 5a.m. and I actually went back to bed for a couple hours.  Yes, the same bed.  It took me awhile to fall back to sleep but when I woke up a couple hours later, I looked at the back of my knee and my elbow and couldn't even see any redness.

OK, so how come NOW, two weeks later, both sting sites are red?  And itchy?  Anyone know scorpion sting behavior?  Is this normal?  To me it's just plain weird.  They both feel and look like mosquito bites.  If I scratch them, they get itchier.  My jeans on the back of my knee touch just enough to keep that almost itching feeling going all day long.  And normal elbow use (leaning, resting, etc.) makes me ever mindful of the littler sting and it's itchiness.

I don't know if they were reddened prior to this past Sunday night because I don't often look at the back of my knee nor my elbow.  But they didn't feel irritated until then so I'm guessing they weren't red either.

Just thought I'd share that bit of oddness with you all. I just don't get it.

And how IS the scorpion situation at our house now you ask? Well, we still haven't gotten the exterminator out here.  The day he was scheduled it rained so we had to cancel, not wanting to waste the money on spraying the ground only to have the rain wash it away.  And between our schedules and his schedules, well we have to wait till next week.

In the meantime, we have bought a whole bunch of "glue boards".  They are ingenious for catching spiders and such.  They have this REALLY sticky glue spread over them that is laced with an attractant.  They smell like some sort of grain, corn or something.  You just peel the protective paper off and gingerly lay the glue board down wherever you need it.   They're about 4"x7" or so.

One of our problem areas is the basement.  We placed several of them down in a particularly troublesome corner and also several at the top of the stairs -trying to catch the nasty creatures before they make their way into the hallway and our main living spaces.  Also, of course, we placed a few in the bedroom.

Last week we noticed we'd caught one on the stairs.  Then over the weekend, I found another one in another trap on the stairs.  Plus...I saw (and killed):  one on the wall and two on the floor!  That's just WAY too many.  But at least they weren't anywhere else in the house.

Until....I checked one of the boards in the bedroom last night.  We had one!  Ugh!  Gross!  I can't stand that there was another one in the bedroom, just 5-6 feet  away from the bed!  It took me hours to go to sleep I was so freaked out.  I did indeed go to bed fully clothed, except I exchanged my jeans for pajama pants.  And I took the advice of my cousin who suggested I tuck my pant legs into my socks.  And I also wore a long sleeved T-shirt AND put hair bands around my wrists over the sleeves!  I looked like a complete dork but I felt safer. 

If you're squeamish about insects, here's fair warning that below is a picture of the disgusting creature caught on a glue board in the bedroom.  I lifted the board off the carpet and placed it on the sandstone slab on which sits our propane heating stove.

I have totally been having the creepy-crawly skin things ever since discovering this little, this little, ...I don't have pleasant or clean words to describe him.

I WILL BE SO GLAD WHEN THE EXTERMINATOR COMES!!!

We think we figured out how the one that stung me got into the bed.  I had been working on organizing some piles of stuff we'd had on the bedroom floor.  Our house is rather small and apart from the damp, mildew and mold prone basement that draws water every spring, the only storage space is our clothes closet.  In recent years, our lives have expanded to include a photography business, a creative re-awakening (read, art supplies), jewelrymaking, van camping in cold weather, and the acquisition of lots of Mom's stuff.   Bottom line?  We have stuff  EVERYWHERE.  We are still trying to whittle away at it and get organized by first getting rid of old stuff.

The day before the scorpion sting I was reorganizing the extra blankets, comforters, and bedding that had been in a stack on the bedroom floor.  I unfolded everything and re-folded it into my new favorite storage style, rolling.  I unfolded each one onto the bed and then rolled it up, tied it around with some yarn I decided I don't like, and made a nice, neat, compact stack - on the floor again unfortunately.   We're thinking all this floor to bed commotion is how the scorpion got onto, and eventually into, the bed.

Today, before I realized what I'd done, I had taken some OTHER stuff off the bedroom floor and used the bed again as a platform for looking through and reorganizing.  GREAT!  Can I expect another scorpion, or perhaps a spider, in bed again tonight?  WHAT was I thinking?

And WHAT were we thinking when we designed and built this house with no storage space?!!

Heebie Jeebies at 5 AM

There I was at 5:00 a.m. this morning, minding my own business, half asleep and turning over in bed when...ouch! The back of my leg hurt. OW! The pain intensified. I grabbed my leg and cried out, "Something bit me!" as I was frantically scrambling up the bed under the covers. I was desperately trying to get every part of me away from the middle of the bed where something I definitely did not appreciate was lurking.

It got me behind the knee. I'd just rolled over and felt a little sting that slowly increased. As I was scrambling to sit up and get away, I leaned on my opposite elbow and felt another smaller sting. I threw off the covers in a panic and reached for a flashlight. Living in the pitch dark woods, we always have flashlights at our bedsides. I also always have extra pillows hanging around me. I moved one of the pillows and scanned the light to see what had gotten me. "There's a SCORPION in the bed!" I blurted it out with a combination of fear, disgust, and anger...all while I was clamoring out from under the covers in one direction and climbing off the end of the bed in the other direction. Eew! Gross! And huu-ah-ah (said with a shake of the head and a complete shudder of skin crawling creepiness!) I'm shuddering just typing about it! I gave my husband a book and he promptly killed it.

We called the hospital Emergency Room to inquire about what to expect. I understand from my brother, an E.R. Doc, they don't really do anything for scorpion stings anymore because they found people were getting sicker from the anti-venom than from the sting itself. They told me that it's a neuro-toxin and I'd probably experience jittery jumpy eyes and a tingling in my mouth when I drank. She told me to put ice on it to slow the progress of the venom.

The fact that I'm posting rather nonchalantly about it lets you know that it was not a bad sting. I understand they can be very, very painful...for days and days. I am fortunate. I've always heard that it's the little scorpions that are the most dangerous, the most venomous. That's what we have, little ones. I'm starting to suspect, however, that "little" could be a result of either breed or age. This sting was not bad and the pain didn't last very long at all. My father-in-law was stung by one and he was in terrible pain for 3-4 days. My dad was stung by one as he reached into his laundry hamper and his hurt pretty badly, too. By the time I was talking with the doctor, I couldn't feel the pain of either sting anymore and I never experienced the symptoms. I am very thankful this was so insignificant.

But a scorpion! In my bed! I tell you it's going to be hard to go to bed tonight. I'm tempted to sleep fully clothed and with my shoes on! And a scarf around my neck. And mufflers on my ears. And safety glasses over my eyes. I've been feeling skin crawlies every now and then all day today. I've been checking everything and this morning I shined my flashlight into my jeans, my shoes and my socks before putting them on!

This is not the first scorpion I've seen in the house. We've seen a number of them. They mostly come in through our basement. We set out these glue traps and catch them. Once I actually took a shower with one. It was in our "jug shower" days - before we had running water here off the grid. Thinking it was a little cluster of hair and, not wanting to wash it down the drain, I left it there but kept looking at it. "Huh," I eventually thought to myself, "that little bit of hair is in the exact shape of a scorpion. There's what could be the tail and there's what could be the pinchers." I sprinkled some water on it and it stayed in the same shape, but it moved. As in, with life. So, yes, I took a shower with a scorpion once. And now it seems I've slept with one in my bed, too. (There go those crawly chills up my leg and down my arm!)

When my Mom and Dad first lived in Phoenix it was back in the 1950's during Dad's residency. They lived in a little apartment on 36th Street and Indian School Rd. (so named long ago because there was once a school for native Americans back when no one thought it wrong to call them Indians.) My brother was just a baby and Mom was advised to put drinking glasses underneath each leg of his crib because whereas scorpions could crawl up the wooden legs, they could not crawl up glass.

I'm basically pretty miffed that we have scorpions here. We do not live in the desert. (Do you hear me, scorpions?!) We do NOT live in the desert! We LEFT the desert for the mountains, the cool wooded mountains with pine trees, not cactus. But we have scorpions nonetheless. And rattle snakes, by the way, but that's a complaint for another time that I'd really rather not get into anyway.

At any rate, we've called exterminators today and have selected one to come out this week. He will spray around the outside perimeter, the foundation, the basement, and the interior. AND we're going to have him "dust" the crawl space with a special insecticide dust that clings to the woodwork and should kill any creepy crawlies clinging there. We will feel much better once that is done.