scorpion

Alex was getting ready to go out last night. He called me into his room and pointed to his chair (the one he uses as a 'clothes hanger' for the few clothes that don't end up in a pile on the floor.)  Took me a few seconds to see what he wanted me to see: a rather large scorpion.  VERY good thing it hadn't crawled into the jeans he was getting ready to put on.  I was dispatched to get something to scoop it into while he kept an eye on it since they like dark places and can disappear really fast. 

Unfortunately it seems like they never do appear singly, so we're likely to find a second (and possibly third) one in the house in the next day or so.  Tom and Alex have each been stung once on the foot when they were outside barefoot (Tom was taking trash out to the street, and Alex was merely getting out of the pool) and stepped on one.  Lisa 'hosted' one in her bed not that long ago that stung her arm multiple times. 

I've never had the 'honor' of being stung, and from their reports of the experience I would like to keep it that way!

  I did come close twice (at least knowingly - I realize that there could be other times I lucked out and didn't even know it!) The first time was the summer of 1966 when spending 6 weeks in Israel with AZA-BBG.  I was leaning against a wall, talking with a boy, who all of a sudden got very excited/upset at something, which turned out to be a scorpion crawling on the wall behind me.  I'd never seen one - don't know if we even had them in Maryland - and certainly had no idea about their painful strings, so I was pretty calm about the whole thing.  The second time was a few years ago when I brushed at a tickling sensation at my leg while sitting at the computer; as I looked down it turned out to have been a small scorpion that I'd brushed off of me.