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Date Posted: 13:16:15 03/27/03 Thu
Author: jp
Subject: Re: Tales from the scorpion side
In reply to: miner 's message, "Re: Tales from the scorpion side" on 11:34:50 03/27/03 Thu

>yeah, JP, when i got stung it really aroused my
>curiosity about the little fuckers so i went online
>and read up on the subject much like yrself. thanks
>for pointing out something that i did not: small
>children. actually, the way it works is that most
>species in the U.S. are not harmful unless you are
>allergic, a small child, but it can also affect the
>elderly and smaller animals. the bark scorpion is most
>prevalant in the US i think, certainly in southern
>arizona, and that's the kind that got me. i only got 2
>in my apartment during the rainy season (disturbs the
>nests casuing them to roam-otherwise they are quite
>territorial and stay put-)but my landlord who lived in
>another house had problems with them being in the bed
>without his and his wife's knowledge, so they'd roll
>over on 'em and get stung. after that i was kind of
>sweating it and one night fell asleep, probably had a
>bad dream about it and woke up and thought that the
>draw-string on the outside of my shorts was a scorpion
>in the bed with me, so i leapt out of bed and freaked
>out when i saw the thing leap with me and stay on me.
>i've since mellowed out a lot on that. never saw any
>again in that place-had a problem with roaches anyway,
>so i would get an all purpose pesticide (spray) and
>blast the place once a month-pretty damn effective -
>rarely saw any roaches after that either. haven't
>lived anywhere with them since, scorpions that is.
>see, like i said, they're territorial. if your home or
>place of work or whatever was built on or near a
>nest-you're going to have problems. if not, you'll
>probably never see any.

I hope not. I haven't seen any so far, but it's only been a couple of weeks. I do have roaches here, and have to spray about twice a week -- what brand of pesticide were you using, that you only sprayed once a month? I should get some of that. People keep recommending roach solutions to me that would also kill the family pets; I don't have a pet, but would still rather have roaches than illness caused from pesticide.

I'm pretty sure the one I saw as a child was a "striped scorpion," although the one I saw was not actually striped. I tracked it down at http://wrbu.si.edu/www/stockwell/du_jour/c_vittatus.html, where its toxicity is listed as "low." Then, they all look pretty damned similar to the killer scorpions of the middle east. Here's a cute page which shows the deadly middle eastern "fat-tailed" scorpion next to a painful but basically harmless "Arizona devil" scorpion: they're indistinguishable at http://www.no-pest.com/Scorpion.htm.

The scorpions which we had back in Georgia we called "tree scorpions," and were obviously different from the "bark scorpions" of the Southwest, if only in size and coloration. They were a good bit smaller, and very much black rather than yellowish-brown. Not sure why I'm bringing that up. They were incredibly rare.

I'm told we also get vinegaroons out here, which look like scorpions but have a flat, long needle for a stinger. I looked them up on line, and I saw people holding them, so I guess they don't/can't use that needle, at least on humans. I'm told they're unnerving, because their pincers are larger than a scorpions, but they're also really slow. They were named such because they smell like vinegar when you kill them.

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