My fun new pet

Oct. 15, 2006

Please indulge me while I take a moment to be hysterical. I’m freaking out right now and seeing as how my husband isn’t home to take the brunt of it, you guys are it. A few minutes ago, I was working in the kitchen while my son played on the floor with pots and pans. He crawled over to the kitchen sink and started playing with the rug (the rug that I washed and changed yesterday, by the way). As he picked it up, he started reaching for something under the rug. I caught a glimpse of his target so I went over to investigate. That’s when the hysterics began. Underneath my kitchen rug was a dead three-inch long scorpion. *Hysterics*.

Sure, it was dead, but it was big. And scaly. And had really scary pinchers. And my son touched it. And who knows if it was really dead or just playing dead. And I have no idea if scorpions play dead that but I’m not going to risk touching it. And it’s stinger might still have poison in it. And it looks more like its four or even five inches long instead of three. And I’m not sure that I can live in the same state as a scorpion, much less the same house. And how many more scorpions might be lurking in my house? And did I mention that my son touched it? *Hysterics*.

Remember that I’m from Oregon, where it’s too cold for bugs bigger than a centimeter long to survive. We don’t have wasps. We don’t have those big red flying things that look like they have feet. We don’t have cockroaches and we definitely do not have scorpions. A few weeks after we moved to Texas, my husband found a scorpion crawling up a shirt in his closet. My first phone call was to the exterminator. My next was to the airline to see when I could catch a flight back to Oregon. I calmed down a bit and weeks turned into months before we saw another scorpion.
When we moved into our house, we decided to get pest control services to avoid another run-in. We paid the $70/month happily for a year, but last summer we decided to try and cut some costs. We figured that we could buy the same pesticides at Home Depot and it would cost much less. We figured that we could find a more environmentally friendly option. We figured wrong.

So, now that I’ve calmed down enough to think somewhat rationally, I’ve swept the dead scorpion into the garbage and washed my rug. I’ve also called the pest control company to see about renewing service. Sure, the scorpion was dead, but he was in my house and my son found him. I am not about to expose myself to another scenario like that. The $70 a month is worth it. Worth every penny.