West Arachnid Lane

I know it is the spooky month of October and all, but I am tired of Arachnids! If you've watched Katie's interview below, you know that she was stung by a scorpion Tuesday evening while sitting still on the floor in our downstairs office, minding her own business. The scorpion that attacked her was a tiny one (this is worse - they usually are more toxic because they don't regulate their poison well and they can slip through teensy tiny cracks so they are very hard to find and get rid of). By the way, did you know that a scorpion can enter your house through a 1/16 of an inch crack anywhere?

I just had my house treated for scorpions two weeks ago. We've seen a vinegaroon and two sun spiders in addition to more scorpions than I care to acknowledge this summer. In fact, most of the scorpions we have seen at this address have been in the last four months, and we have lived here for two years and four months total. My pest control guy said that our whole area of town (WestWing Mountain) has had many houses with the same problem during this time frame.

To clarify, I made a rough map of our floorplan (definitely not to scale), with superimposed dots for scorpions we have found. I used red dots for scorpions we have discovered (or that discovered us, in Katie's case) during the past four months, and green dots for scorpions we found in the preceding two years. There were only two scorpion sightings total inside the house before this summer, and two outside. More recently, we have seen seven of them in our home since June!

Since they are not known to venture to second stories, and since Jackson really, really wants to be down on the floor these days, he and I may be spending quite a lot of time upstairs until it cools off and until the newest, nastiest scorpion treatment takes effect (it can take two weeks).