I've adjusted to the desert pretty well I'd say. I even like some things about it..... did I just say that? The wildlife, however, is not my favorite. Why must the ugliest, scariest, most deadly of all creatures make their home here? Yes, I'm talking about you rattlesnake, black widow, brown recluse, and scorpion. Luckily, they usually tend to stay in their homes in the undeveloped part of the desert or at least in your back yard. At least that's what I thought. Friday night I was minding my own business, cleaning my kitchen, when I opened my dish towel drawer to see this lovely waiting for me.
Disgust, fear, anxiety do not do justice to my initial reaction. I basically freaked out and spent the rest of the night planning my move back to Oregon away from THAT! I was not going to raise my babies in a city, let alone a house where scorpions could wander in at their leisure. Not to mention I was pretty sure after a google search it was the most deadly of all scorpions found in the US. That night everything made me jump. And I mean
every thing. I chucked my phone across the room when a fly flew by my face and I screamed when I came across a very sinister looking cheerio on the floor. When I did finally go to bed I would jerk awake every time I started to drift off, thinking I saw/felt a scorpion. Not a very restful night to say the least. I'm pretty sure even Mark dreamed of scorpions as he woke up twice, sat up in bed, and started hitting around trying to squash something. We, ok I was quite traumatized. The next day brought a bit of relief. I got a hold of a local exterminator who told me there were no poisonous scorpions in Apple Valley and that finding this one in our house was probably a fluke. He told me the name of the kind commonly found up here and told me to google it, which I did and, I'll admit, it does look a lot more like the nonpoisonous kind. I told Mark that he should get stung just to make sure. He didn't go for it, go figure. Anyway, we haven't had our house sprayed yet. I am still considering it. And as of yet, we haven't found any of his family members. Hopefully we never do. Still - poison or no poison, it is one of the creepiest things I have ever seen! The desert just lost a lot of points in my book.
We still have this guy in a bag on our counter. I'm not sure what to do with it. I want to keep it around until an exterminator can come out and verify that it is not poisonous. Mark has taken to feeding it, as if it's some kind of pet, which grosses me out almost more than finding it. I just want to forget it's whole species even exists!
