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?!!