Being stung by scorpions in bed: some people are bothered by this idea, others are not, and never the twain shall meet
Yaya and I had another go-round about scorpions today (although this time, thankfully, we were talking about theoretical scorpions and not actual scorpions that were being shaken in cups in front of my face). It all started when I explained to her that that it keeps me up at night to ponder the following data:
(click to enlarge)
In the interest of full disclosure, I should add that a few weeks ago a nice friend at a baby shower told me that when she lived in France they had scorpions in their house and this never happened to her. At first her statement shattered my perception that scorpions always target people in beds at night. But then I had a delayed reaction in which I realized that she said this was in France. These are French scorpions. These are work/life balance scorpions. Maybe her experience indicates that not all scorpions are as inherently aggressive and creepy as I thought they were, or maybe les scorpions were en grève because the threadcount on her sheets wasn't high enough. The data is inconclusive, hence it has been omitted from the chart.
Anyway, after taking a moment to ask if I seriously lie awake at night stressing out about things in chart form (yes, welcome to the world of a neurotic nerd), my mother-in-law gave me this look that all my Texan relatives give me when the subject comes up, a sort of bemused smile that says, "And the problem is...?" I wanted to react by sputtering hysterically, "And the problem is WAKING UP TO SCORPIONS STINGING ME IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT WHILE I AM SOUND ASLEEP HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE WHAT THE PROBLEM IS THERE?!" but I decided to make a futile attempt to have a civilized dialogue on the subject, out of morbid curiosity if nothing else.
Yaya took this opportunity to explain to me that it is only because of my pampered middle-class lifestyle that I even worry about this. She offered some light stories from her childhood of scorpions attacking them in the course of daily life. "Those suckers sure would get us good every time we got on that tire swing!" she recounted with a chuckle. "And we didn't worry about it when they got in our beds -- you'd just brush 'em off if they got ya' while you were sleeping." She assured me that if I'd grown up in rural Texas in the days before fancy-schmancy houses with things like insulation and well-sealed walls, having a few scorpions in the bed here and there would be just a natural part of life for me.
Umm, no.
This is not, of course, something I can prove empirically. But I am certain -- like really, really certain -- that under no circumstances would I ever be nonchalant about scorpions in my bed at night. Maybe I am missing some sort of gene that makes you chilled out about surprise nocturnal attacks by stinging arachnids, but I do not believe that my distress about this situation is due to lack of exposure to it.
Her next point -- one that I've heard before and found no less perplexing this time than the first 100 times I heard it from other Texan relatives -- was that scorpion stings are no worse than wasp stings. Really? And to think I was all stressed out about this! I mean, seriously, that was the only thing I was worried about, the toxicity level of the venom. Because, other than that, there is nothing at all disturbing about being woken from a peaceful slumber in the still of the night by an explosion of pain and realizing that there is a scorpion wrapped up in your pajamas, attacking you, repeatedly stinging you, and between the darkness and your delirious state you cannot immediately locate it to get it off of you. As long as it's not worse than a wasp sting, that should be fine. ...Oh, wait, no, that still sounds like a hellish nightmare.
At this point the conversation ended with me uttering a long, defeated sigh and Yaya needing to yell at someone named Billy Ray on her cell phone.
What I have found is this: if you don't see what is disturbing about the idea of being stung by scorpions in bed at night, it is not something I can explain to you. I have tried repeatedly to show Yaya and my other Texan relatives my way of thinking on this, to find common ground in our different viewpoints, and I submit that it cannot be done. It is an unbridgeable gap.
At least I have a blog. Evidently if this ever does happen I will get no sympathy from my relatives about it; but hopefully, somewhere out there on the internet, I will be able to find at least one person who could see why I might be unsettled about scorpions in my bed.
(click to enlarge)In the interest of full disclosure, I should add that a few weeks ago a nice friend at a baby shower told me that when she lived in France they had scorpions in their house and this never happened to her. At first her statement shattered my perception that scorpions always target people in beds at night. But then I had a delayed reaction in which I realized that she said this was in France. These are French scorpions. These are work/life balance scorpions. Maybe her experience indicates that not all scorpions are as inherently aggressive and creepy as I thought they were, or maybe les scorpions were en grève because the threadcount on her sheets wasn't high enough. The data is inconclusive, hence it has been omitted from the chart.
Anyway, after taking a moment to ask if I seriously lie awake at night stressing out about things in chart form (yes, welcome to the world of a neurotic nerd), my mother-in-law gave me this look that all my Texan relatives give me when the subject comes up, a sort of bemused smile that says, "And the problem is...?" I wanted to react by sputtering hysterically, "And the problem is WAKING UP TO SCORPIONS STINGING ME IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT WHILE I AM SOUND ASLEEP HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE WHAT THE PROBLEM IS THERE?!" but I decided to make a futile attempt to have a civilized dialogue on the subject, out of morbid curiosity if nothing else.
Yaya took this opportunity to explain to me that it is only because of my pampered middle-class lifestyle that I even worry about this. She offered some light stories from her childhood of scorpions attacking them in the course of daily life. "Those suckers sure would get us good every time we got on that tire swing!" she recounted with a chuckle. "And we didn't worry about it when they got in our beds -- you'd just brush 'em off if they got ya' while you were sleeping." She assured me that if I'd grown up in rural Texas in the days before fancy-schmancy houses with things like insulation and well-sealed walls, having a few scorpions in the bed here and there would be just a natural part of life for me.
Umm, no.
This is not, of course, something I can prove empirically. But I am certain -- like really, really certain -- that under no circumstances would I ever be nonchalant about scorpions in my bed at night. Maybe I am missing some sort of gene that makes you chilled out about surprise nocturnal attacks by stinging arachnids, but I do not believe that my distress about this situation is due to lack of exposure to it.
Her next point -- one that I've heard before and found no less perplexing this time than the first 100 times I heard it from other Texan relatives -- was that scorpion stings are no worse than wasp stings. Really? And to think I was all stressed out about this! I mean, seriously, that was the only thing I was worried about, the toxicity level of the venom. Because, other than that, there is nothing at all disturbing about being woken from a peaceful slumber in the still of the night by an explosion of pain and realizing that there is a scorpion wrapped up in your pajamas, attacking you, repeatedly stinging you, and between the darkness and your delirious state you cannot immediately locate it to get it off of you. As long as it's not worse than a wasp sting, that should be fine. ...Oh, wait, no, that still sounds like a hellish nightmare.
At this point the conversation ended with me uttering a long, defeated sigh and Yaya needing to yell at someone named Billy Ray on her cell phone.
What I have found is this: if you don't see what is disturbing about the idea of being stung by scorpions in bed at night, it is not something I can explain to you. I have tried repeatedly to show Yaya and my other Texan relatives my way of thinking on this, to find common ground in our different viewpoints, and I submit that it cannot be done. It is an unbridgeable gap.
At least I have a blog. Evidently if this ever does happen I will get no sympathy from my relatives about it; but hopefully, somewhere out there on the internet, I will be able to find at least one person who could see why I might be unsettled about scorpions in my bed.
posted by Jennifer F. at 5:30 PM
47 Comments:
I hate to burst your bubble, but scorpion stings are worse than wasp stings, by a good margin. They're not the end of the world, but they're no picnic either.
I'd prefer the wasp. Definitely the wasp.
Oh, I find that thought unsettling. For the record, I find the thought of anything pointy and poisonous in my bed unsettling.
Mercifully, we don't have scorpions where I live, but whenever we visit my mother-in-law in Arizona I make my husband give me the run-down on which poisonous predators live where and how I can avoid offending them at all costs. I check my shoes compulsively for live-ins. It becomes an obsession by the end of the visit.
I can see why you'd be disturbed by scorpions if you can see why I'm disturbed by black widows, even if they ARE in every single back yard in Southern California and even if they are NOT likely to jump out and bite my children. I'm still disturbed by the fact that if I want to find a black widow, I can just go out in my back yard and find me one.
(Plus I know someone who knows someone whose little girl was bitten by a black widow in their back yard and got VERY SICK.)
Yep, definitely disturbing. I'll even give you this: I'll take my quesient black widows over your marauding scorpions. Does that help?
Ok, sometimes in the middle of a cold Boston winter I dream of moving south. I went to college in Florida, and the roaches and palmetto bugs are gross. But they are not scorpions! I think I will stay put in the chilly north. At least we don't have scorpions, palmetto bugs, giant spiders, etc. I can't even IMAGINE waking up with a scorpion in my bed.
I think she's yanking your chain. I cannot imagine not getting upset by scorpions in the bed. It reminds me of my mom insisting that she walked to school ten miles over barbed wire fences uphill both ways...
Or something like that....
Jane M
This won't help you at all, but what the hey. (I share your horror at the thought of being stung in bed by a scorpion -- or anything else! -- so there's that, at least!)
Anyway, for what it's worth: When I was a kid, maybe 11 or 12, I was frying up some bacon for my family's dinner. All of a sudden, it occurred to me that I would probably get splashed by the grease as the bacon was frying, and it would hurt. Not a lot, mind you; but being absolutely certain that pain was on the way and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it really upset me.
I put on my mom's playtex gloves, got out the longest tongs I could find, and told myself how silly I was being.
It didn't help.
And I still got splashed.
Then -- I was a very introspective pre-adolescent, I guess -- it occurred to me that Jesus knew that what He was about to experience was gonna hurt.
A lot.
Made him sweat blood at the thought of it.
And then, in an instant, that silly little incident with the bacon grease actually made me feel a little closer to Him.
I dunno. Maybe that'll give you something else to think about as you consider the likelihood of a nasty bug bite lurking in your future.
(The idea that nutty people who fear bacon grease read your blog -- and get a lot out of it -- should, perhaps, give you pause as well!!) :)
Warmly,
Eileen
OK we need adopt a more flexible position here. What I suggest is that you check out this as a possible solution. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnshU0OKCkM&feature=related
If you can't beat them you might as well join them and become their leader. After a little practice you might try preaching to them (that's what St. Francis would do.)
Jen, if it's any comfort, I'm with you on the scorpion thing.
I've never been stung by a scorpion or a wasp and am pretty terrified of both. And if I go the rest of my life without experiencing either kind of sting I'll be perfectly happy.
I forgot to tell you that I was stung earlier this week by a bee. It seems I reached into the kitchen sink and grabbed a drinking glass that had a bee on the rim. He got me on the thumb and for some reason in a completely involuntary reaction...I dispatched him to the land of milk and honey (if you know what I mean). Not very Franciscan...
Hmmm. I've heard of German Scorpions -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorpions_(band) --but not the French variety.
I'm totally on your side on this one. We have no scorpions here in PA (thank you, dear God!). But I briefly lived in northern VA, and the bugs there were so enormous that it crushed any ideas I ever had of living farther south. While I was living there, I once was stung on the head by a gigantic wasp, and had a throbbing goose egg at the sting site for a couple of days. If I even thought there was the slightest possibility of a scorpion being in my bed, I would never sleep again. At all.
Scorpions must somehow be a result of the Fall.
Thank you all for your comments! I knew I was not alone.
Elizabeth - I have also heard of those German scorpions, and once established that they were not at the root of this particular infestation. :)
Re: Scorpions and Wasps,
It very much depends on the size and type of the scorpion. All the ones I've been stung by hurt less, but they were the small Georgia variety. They would scrape their tail along your skin (being too small to really stick into it) and the sting would feel like a cut, because of the venom in the scrape.
Ok,maybe I am just unrealistic and cranky, but I would prefer not to be stung, bitten, or otherwise attacked by any kind of insect, arachnid, reptile, or creepy critter while I am in bed.
In fact, I prefer not to thing about the possibility at all, but NOW, of course, I can't get it out of my mind!
NOW I am envisioning an entire welcoming party crouched quietly beneath my covers, just waiting for me to naively turn off the light and slip into bed.....
Thanks Jen. I hear sleep is highly overrated.
oh my gosh, this is why i love your blog so much- the never ending variety! (and the charts- that is really amazing that you think like that!)
Yes, the thought of a scorpion in my bed waking me by stinging me sounds horrid. I can completely understand where you're coming from and I hope it never happens to either of us.
I thought I was immune to the whole scorpion danger, but since we've moved up to the mountains I've found several scorpions running around the property. I really hope they never find their way into the house. At least the ones I've seen are really little, but perhaps they are just the babies and the parents are too smart to be seen by the likes of me.
Every time I see a scorpion though, I think of you. Is that weird?
So what your saying is, a scorpion stinging you in the middle of the night would Rock You Like A Hurricane?
I lived in the Texas countryside for seven years growing up. We found scorpions in the house often, and none of us were ever stung by one--in bed, or otherwise. You are welcome to add all four of us to your chart. ;-)
And now I'll have that song stuck in my head all day.
I haven't ever had much fear of scorpions, even when I was living on a cot outside of Uvalde, Texas. I have the most serious "spider dreams" though and I can make it from my bed to the hallway without ever touching the floor. :)
I know how you feel
If I ever had scorpions in my bed, I'm fairly certain that I would flip out, and do something that a nice Catholic girl shouldn't do, like scream as loud as I can while I kill it, oh maybe 4 or 5 times, just to be sure that it's dead. Then, to call the SWAT team, or some such to start an area-wide killing spree of all such beasties, so that they could never do this to me again. Then, I could go to confession and say, "I'm sorry Father, but there were fangs and venom, and I just couldn't have that."
Thanks for a good laugh this am!! Love Yaya and her infinite wisdom.
I'm totally with you, although in my part of the South it is black widow spiders that we worry about...I say "we" meaning "I" of course, because no one else has trouble sleeping after having seen one in the far corner of her back yard. No one else I know checks the sandbox and swingset obsessively to make sure those evil creatures aren't near her babies...but I think everyone else is completely unreasonable.
I stand with you in your terror of the whole idea of scorpions in the bed. Yes, yes, that's a yes.
Keeping low thread count sheets on the bed might be a good pre-cautionary measure. The whole illegal immigrant thing, you know. You never know but they COULD be French,with their little body clocks still on the wrong schedule...
We have no scorpions in Michigan. One more thing to love about the Midwest!!!
So funny!
I was just reading this when two people came into my office. I asked if either of them would find it reassuring that a scorpion sting is no worse than a wasp sting. The woman said, "No way, it has to be worse." The guy asked, "worse, or worse for you?" and I didn't know. He said, "No, I wouldn't find it reassuring." Then the woman told us a story of when she was about 10, her parents had a water bed, which was warm, and apparently wasps like warm water beds. It was a cold evening, and she jumped into the bed, and was immediately covered with a swarm of stinging wasps. So, she doesn't find it reassuring either.
I can't help remembering some old movie I saw on TV when I was a kid, with a scene of some guy buried up to his neck in the desert sand, and arabic-like horsemen riding around, and this poor guy was surrounded by scorpions. So, I don't find it reassuring either. I would definitely rather not have either a wasp or a scorpion in my bed.
Another thing, I was stung by a big fat paper wasp in the eyelid when I was a kid. Had a swollen black eye for a long time. I was stung by one of those long brown wasps in the sole of my foot. And I was stung under the tongue (never ride a bike with your mouth upen) by a yellow jacket, and finally, I once had a wasp take up temporary residence in my pants pocket while the pants were on the clothesline, and he stung me on the thigh when I put the pants on.
I think the fact that I still remember these incidents of at least 35 years ago is an indication of the unpleasantness of wasp stings. So, I'm not reassured.
oooo...scorpions in bed... no thank you very much.
However, I don't fear scorpions as much as I do spiders, especially brown recluses. But then a bite from those can be deadly. There was a girl who lived down the street from my parents who got bit by one and died. Spiders are evil....lol
I'd lie awake at night worrying in chart form, too!
There's a reason my parents have always said that they lived a lifetime in Texas (which was about 5 years)...
If I were you I'd MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE to a state with fewer poisonus and disturbing insects.
Colorado is pretty nice. I've never seen a roach, a scorpion or a bunch of other horrible bugs my mom has told me about. We do have the occasional black widow and brown recluse spider around here (hubby's coworker had a brown recluse spider bite and was out from work for a couple of months...My spider killing has increased ten fold since then!) We also have rattlesnakes, but fortunately, the only snake I've ever seen was not a rattler, and dead in a plastic bag on my MILs kitchen table...I guess she stepped on it in the night and put it in the baggy for later identification. Her city born and raised daughter in law (me!) was less than impressed first thing in the morning...
Jen, have you considered moving farther north of Austin? I have lived in North Texas all my life and never seen a scorpion outside of a zoo.
I lived in Texas for a while, and when they were building a lot of houses in our neighborhood, they would stir up scorpion nests, not to mention lots of little baby rattlesnakes. The first time I saw a scorpion in my house I picked up the biggest, heaviest coffee table art book I could find and threw from across the room at the thing. The second time I found one, it was right next to my little boy sleeping in his toddler bed, no doubt preparing to do to him what these things have done to all of your relatives and friends. I now live back in my native New York, but I still shake out my gardening shoes every time I go out into the garage to put them on, as taught to me by the wise Texans who know better than to put their shoes on without first checking for scorpions. Gross.
I'm another one of those who doesn't find the comparison to wasp-stings reassuring.
I don't know how it could be.
I love living in Alaska. Folks seem to fixate on the winter cold-- as if they're actually going to be out in it perpetually.
I think more about brilliant, colorful summers with no snakes or creepy-crawlies bigger than a Susan B. Anthony dollar.
I'm not here because I hate bugs, but avoiding the creepies is a nice perk.
Jennifer-you might want to check this out, might be worse than a scorpion...
http://annunciations.wordpress.com/2008/04/23/florida/
Not that this will make you feel any better, but I'm paranoid about scorpions too, although we don't live in scorpion country now.
I grew up in Arizona and I never got a scorpion sting, although the first one we found in our house was next to my foot when I was sitting on the toilet. We had the little pinkish yellow scorpions known as blondies. They were much worse than wasps. My mother and my two year old brother were stung. My mom was stung on the thumb by a scorpion that had crawled into the laundry she was folding. Her arm was numb to the elbow for a month. My little brother was stung on the toe by a scorpion he got to close to on the patio. He went into convulsions from the poison and spent three days in the hospital.
Now it does totally depend upon the kind of scorpion. I think we had the very worst and most poisonous kind, but still, I think they are nothing to scoff about.
Well shoot, I guess now I'm some kind of a pansy for not liking wasps either... (They probably return the sentiment since this dislike is generally expressed through trying to kill any wasps I encounter.)
Rest assured, we will all sympathize with you when the time at last comes for you to be stung in bed by a scorpion. But please do be sure to write a typically hilarious post about it first we we can get a good laugh in before we start feeling sorry for you. ;-)
I am dead-set against any creature that has more than four legs. If I found a scorpion anywhere near me, let alone in my house, let alone in my BED, I would be completely 100% hysterical.
Not to be too picky about your really pretty chart, but according to your earlier post you mentioned that your grandfather actually has been stung while sleeping -- shouldn't he have a green X then?
Rebekka -
Not to be too picky about your really pretty chart, but according to your earlier post you mentioned that your grandfather actually has been stung while sleeping -- shouldn't he have a green X then?
But of course! Accuracy in scorpion charts is of the utmost importance around here. :) The green x's were just for people who had known scorpion infestations, and the red were for people who had been stung in bed, hence my grandfather does have a red x. Actually, I guess there was no need to make them two different colors. Does that make sense?
Oh, no. I had no idea that all those people had been stung in bed. I thought this was some sort of rare occurrence (obviously horrifying, though).
Does this mean it's just a matter of time until your number is up? I can't believe that the people around you are downplaying the whole thing.
Maybe you need to make some sort of Scorpion Threat Scale with color codes so that we know how bad things are, just like they do for Fire Danger or terrorists?
Mark up one more victim to scorpion bites ... and it happened just last night. I had gotten up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. Immediately after I laid back down in bed ... I got the painful bite right smack on my rear end. It must have gotten in my pajama bottoms.
I still feel the sting ... now 12 hours later ... and my tongue has kind of been tingling all day. It's weird.
As an arachnophobe, while we don't have scorpions, I live in holy terror in summer months, into fall. I'm not afraid of scorpions, but spiders. Huge spiders. In Minnesota, we have huge spiders and they can appear anywhere.
If I lived in Texas, I'd be in complete solidarity with you against your crazy relatives that don't see the problem.
Jen, I'm with you on this one!! You crack me up, even as I know this is NOT a laughing matter. If I found a scorpion even near my bed I would freak and it would look like a bad old "B" movie.....I grew up w/ scorpions and tarantulas and rattlers...and now we worry about brown recluse spiders too. Ack. Not a big fan of bugs here.....maybe there is a patron saint of this somehow???
Once upon a vacation, I was traveling from LA to SF with some SF cityfolk. It got dark while we were still inbetween and way out in the country, so of course I was looking at the innumerable stars out the windows (you know, crane your neck and look up). Them being cityfolk, they wanted to stop the car and look. So we pulled off at the next exit and got out of the car.
Big mistake. Because as soon as we started looking at the stars, the rattlers' percussion section started up.
I wanted to get back in the car and get the heck away before the rattlers moved in, but just about then the police car pulled up to ask us what we were doing. Which ruined sky visibility, but apparently discouraged the rattlers.
We had a little chat with the nice policeman. It is possible that I wasn't quite as shocked about the rattlers as he thought it was amusing, but apparently worse things than rattlers pull off the highway in that spot. So all in all, it's not easy to do impromptu stargazing in California.
It does explain why kids in movies are always sitting on their car hoods instead of on the ground, like teenagers who live in less hostile environments do....
Is there nothing else of interest in the world -otherwise, I enjoy your site
My daughter, another Jennifer, had some bark scorpions in her house when she first moved to Las Vegas. They are the most lethal ones in that area..One of them stung a man who came to clean her carpet and they took him to the ER. No one else got stung, but it was unnerving for my daughter, A Florida girl, to find them from time to time. She was terrified that one would sting her baby who was 6 months old at the time. It took a long time, but they seem to have gotten rid of the infestation. I'd gotten over my fear while visiting and now I read this! Just when you think it's safte to go back in the water.
Several years ago I lived in Mexico, but not in an area infested by anthing other than large roaches. (You could put a leash on them and call them "Fido")
Well, two years later, I returne to visit friends, and we decided to travel on the Maxipista from Mexico City to Puerto Vallarta. A magazine at the time happened to have an article about the Maxipista which was fairly new, the geography and geology through which it passed, and an article abotu the white scorpions in Nyarit. They were the most dangerous scorpions, and in that state, there were not many hospitals. It was a cautionary and activist article, along the lines of which you'd find in Time or Redbook. It wasn't news to the natives, but boy, it sure made me, as a tourist, take note! I still have the magazine.
By the way...the magazine was written for Mexicans..it's all in Spanish. So it wasn't tourist hype
I've been terrified of "blondie" scorpions since then, and terrified of black scorpions since I saw part of "Dune" with my brother years before.
What about mice? I've been in the US for almost 4 years now (in DC and Northern VA), and I've seen at least one mouse a year in my house... The worst was a vacation in the mountains in Maryland, when we had a whole lot of them in our B&B room! I had never seen a mouse before, and now I'm almost getting used to them... Sad! But at least I'm not in Texas: the last time we visited my father-in-law (who lives one hour north of Houston), the whole outside of the house was "decorated" with huge spiders and their webs - it was disgusting! I also saw a tarantula, goodness! And people would laugh at me and go around barefoot... I told my husband we will never go back there in summer!
Scorpions? Seriously? I've lived in Texas for nearly 9 years and have never even seen one, but let me tell you, I would be freaking out in a big way if I did. Especially if I found one in the house. Or the bed! Smelling salts would be required to bring me back to the real world. That's all I'm saying.
And I thought our super-sized roaches were bad.
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