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.

Would somebody please tell me how to turn off the "terrifying bug magnet" in my house?

Yesterday afternoon my toddler ran out onto the back porch to look for my husband. I was about to turn around and go back inside when I saw some stray toy in his path. I didn't recognize this long black object with neon red and yellow accents it so I took a closer look. When my son was just about on top of it I realized that it was not in fact a toy, but rather THE BIGGEST FREAKING CENTIPEDE I HAVE EVER SEEN. (I did not use the word "freaking" at the time.)

I'll just tell you right now that whatever your visualizing is not accurate. In your optimistic naïvete you are probably picturing the type of centipede you may have seen around your own house, that looks like a long worm with a bunch of fuzzy little legs. Though those do exist in our area, that is not, of course, what I saw on my porch yesterday. Because that wouldn't be terrifying. We only have terrifying bugs at my house. Anyway, if you'd be so kind as to click on this link you'll see a photo of the type of centipede that inhabits my property: they're huge, with shiny black bodies; thick, bright yellow legs; a neon red head; and two long, menacing looking stinger things in the back ("stinger things" -- hey, I'm not a biologist). The one on my porch was thicker than the one in that photo, and was about seven inches long. I'm not exaggerating. Seven inches.

My husband tried to see the bright side of the situation by suggesting that perhaps they eat scorpions. My glass was still half empty. As much as I would like to have some creature around that eats scorpions, I have to draw the line at giant "I thought this sort of thing only existed in Africa" centipedes. Also, it just gives the whole house a creepy feel to picture these Godzilla vs. Mothra type battles playing out on my back porch, with two freakish creatures attacking and stinging each other to death right next to the kids' sandbox.

One thing I did take away from this situation, however, was that I am able emit a type of scream even louder and more blood-curdling than I previously thought possible. I actually never even thought of myself of the type of woman who screams about bugs until we moved into this house. I was more of the grumbling profanity type, until I saw my first scorpion inside the house. But after a few months of living in this house that is sort of a suburban freak show of the most horrifying bugs that southern America has to offer, I've realized that I'm actually quite a screamer, and that there are distinct levels of screams that vary by type and weirdness of bug. As I have a full thirty minutes of free time in front of me this afternoon, I shall break it down:

SCREAM VOLUME BY TYPE OF BUG

Level 1: I first used this scream when I realized that what I thought was a bird on our porch light at night was actually a massive moth. [Rather than a true "AAAH!" scream, this is more of an "Ah?"]

Level 2: This is for when one of the many little lizards that inhabits our house catches me off guard. [There was probably a time in my life when encountering lizards in my bedroom and the kids' rooms would have resulted in a Level 4 scream, but now it seems kind of charming.]

Level 3: Used for spiders larger than two inches; for when one of the four types of wasps that inhabit our front and back porches flies within two feet of me; for those times when I think there is a small wasp in the house and it turns out to be a gigantic mosquito, of a size that would probably leave me needing a blood transfusion if it bit me; and for scorpion sightings outside the house.

Level 4: Reserved for scorpion sightings inside the house.

Seeing as how the sound I make when I see scorpions inside the house is almost loud enough to wake the dead (or at least all neighbors within a two block radius), I thought that that was really the best I could do. And then I was introduced to the gigantic red and yellow centipede on my back porch by the fact that my toddler almost walked right into it, and I realized that I am in fact quite capable of a new, Level 5 scream.

If I ever see one of these things inside the house I think I might blow a vocal cord. Also, I think that that might just push me over some sort of mental threshold. I have previously joked about moving because of the scorpion infestation but...dude...if I ever, ever encounter one of these "looks like it escaped from an exhibit at the zoo" centipedes inside my house, I'm out. I don't even know if I'd pack anything. I might just grab the kids, my laptop and any heirlooms and head for a hotel and post the house for sale on a real estate site: "Fully furnished home - lovely! - great price! - perfect for entomologists!" with a note to any realtors, "Don't let yourself become paralyzed with terror if you see one of the massive centipedes or scorpions, just make a comment about it having 'rustic charm' and move on".


I'm going to file this in the Scorpions category, because I refuse to think about the fact that our house might be infested by another kind of bug so horrifying as to require its own category on my blog.

Translation, please

A family friend is over here to watch the kids while I write blog posts pay bills and do some work on a consulting project. I just heard a lot of commotion coming from the living room, and now she's yelling about something. Unfortunately, she doesn't speak English and my Spanish is not what it should be. She's saying something like, "Dios mío! Jenny, venga! El niño movió la alfombra y se fue un alacrán MUY GRANDE! Es muy grande, Jenny!"

Anybody know what that means? Did she say we won a big prize or something?

I think God's trying to tell me to call the exterminator

There's been a battle raging the past few days between my laziness and my fear of scorpions: I really don't feel like dealing with an exterminator visit again...yet my attempts to just forget about the fact that there is a vengeful scorpion lurking somewhere in the vicinity of my bedroom or bathroom have not been successful.

And then I hear this gem as part of the readings at Mass last night: "Behold, I have given you the power to 'tread upon serpents' and scorpions."

Since my attempts to tread upon scorpions have been wildly unsuccessful, I will take this to mean that God is telling me to get the exterminator back here.

Also, nice to know that my house is infested with creatures so awful that God calls them out by name in his sacred text. I'll have to remember this when one-upping friends with roaches: "Oh, yeah? I guess I was just thinking that scorpions are worse seeing as how they are specifically MENTIONED IN THE BIBLE and all. For all we know God likes roaches! We can be assured by Scripture, however, that he is anti-scorpion."

They're baaaaack

My husband came home last night and picked up a book off of our bathroom floor. There was nothing under it. This is a very bad thing.

There was supposed to be a scorpion under it.

That's right, they're back. For all of you who read this blog only for scorpion stories and were wishing I'd stop boring on and on about all that Catholic stuff, your prayers have been answered. My thoughts are now 100% focused on the fact that there is a rogue scorpion somewhere in my house even as I type this who probably has a very bad attitude about the fact that I threw a book on him yesterday.

In retrospect, WHAT WAS I THINKING? When am I going to learn that these things don't die? (For those of you who missed my coverage of the previous two learning opportunities I had on this matter, those posts are here and here). I'm surprised I couldn't actually hear the scorpion snickering at my hubris as I walked out of the room, confident that Ross and Westerfield's Corporate Finance dropped from an altitude of about five feet was enough to ensure a human-over-arachnid victory.

A couple things to note that make this situation extra concerning are that a) I found the thing crawling around a few feet away from the baby, and b) I think it came out of one of my bath towels that were stacked in a basket on the floor. My husband suggested that I try to remember to shake out the bath towels before I use them to dry off. Good thing he reminded me, because I might have forgotten all about it! No, I jest. In fact, I have completely recategorized them in my mind from "towels" to "scorpion nests", as in "my hair is wet, would you pass me a scorpion nest?" or "I need to do a load of scorpion nests when I wash the sheets this week." I shall never see them as mere towels again.

One interesting thing that's come of all this is that I've become rather defensive of roaches. A few people have tried making me feel better by noting that scorpions eat roaches. To which I ask (in a more or less shrill tone, depending on when the last scorpion sighting was): "What did a roach ever do to anyone? They don't have pincers, they don't sting, the don't fluoresce under blacklight, they're not notorious of hiding out in shoes and beds! They're FINE!" I think there was a time when I was actually terrified of roaches, but those days are long gone.

Anyway, it looks like the exterminator will be coming back sometime soon. Maybe this is God's way of giving me a chance to express my views in a more compelling manner than muttering "uh-huh."

And if I don't post for a while, it means that we never did find the scorpion, and I'm in the process of packing up our belongings and moving to Siberia, where I hear they do not have scorpions.

A scorpion. In a cup. In my kitchen.

My mother-in-law is in town for the weekend. This morning I walked downstairs to see the children dressed smartly, the table set with our nice china, and my mother-in-law serving up a lovely Eggs Florentine dish with the aroma of buttery homemade croissants wafting all through the house.

Kidding, kidding! It's not that kind of house. My mother-in-law is in town, but the rest of it is just a little fantasy I wanted to indulge in as a sanity-preservation technique. What actually happened is that I walked downstairs to have a cup with a scorpion in it shaken in my face. But before I get into all that, allow me to give you some background:


Pardon the expression, but my mother-in-law is what they call "hell on wheels". In a good way. She has more energy than both of my children combined, likes her TV loud and her cell phone ringer louder, is always on various one-woman-against-the-system crusades for justice that we're never quite sure how she got involved in, and does not have a single non-confrontational bone in her body. She grew up desperately poor in east Texas, became a single mother after an unwanted divorce, and has carved out a better life for herself by sheer, tough-as-nails determination alone. She's also one of those people who you just never know what she's going to do or say next. If we could only get her her own reality show we'd be rich.

So, given what I know about her and what I know about my house, when I groggily walked downstairs this morning to hear her say in her thick east Texas accent that she and the kids found something outside they wanted to give me, I have no idea why my first thought was that it was flowers.

As I wiped sleep from my eyes and she ran up me, holding the baby under one arm like a sack of potatoes and a little children's cup in the other hand, I should have done the math that my crazy house + my crazy mother-in-law = only one thing that could possibly be in that cup. And it wasn't flowers. Nay, it was a scorpion.

Allow me to list some reasons I found this disturbing:

• The cup was a very shallow children's cup, only a few inches deep
• She was waving it right in front of my 11-month-old, who grabs at everything
• I had been trying to tell myself that once the scorpions had seen my exterminator-hiring wrath they'd fled in terror, never to be seen on my property again
• A scorpion in a vigorously shaken cup a few inches from one's face is not generally what one wants to see in the first few moments upon waking
  

My mother-in-law chuckled when she saw the look on my face, laughing that I was so silly to be frightened since, after all, it was dead. Had I been able to speak or think clearly I would have pointed out that a) the fact that it's supposedly dead does not address the issue that it is being held well within reach of the baby. I have my own little quirky rule that the baby is not allowed to grab and stuff into her mouth live OR dead scorpions. And b) THESE THINGS DON'T DIE! I have first-hand knowledge of this! OF COURSE IT'S NOT DEAD!

But I was not able to say any of this, only to point in horror as I backed away. Wanting to prove to me that she was not the sort of irresponsible grandmother who would bring a live scorpion into the house, she began vigorously shaking the cup to confirm its deadness.

Anyone want to guess what happened next?

Oh yeah. It moved. It started twisting around, trying to get out of the cup. My horrified mother-in-law panicked, not sure whether to drop the baby or the cup.

I grabbed the baby and she set the cup up on the counter and covered it with a heavy glass. Obviously my instinct was to dispose of the thing immediately but, as I've mentioned, I recently instituted a No Scorpion Handling policy. In the back of my mind I planned to deal with it eventually, but that's not a pre-coffee endeavor. So I fixed myself a quick breakfast and headed upstairs to shower and get ready for the day.

When I came back downstairs my mother-in-law ran up to me and exclaimed, "JENNIFER! You will NOT believe what happened!" She went on to tell me that she'd dumped the scorpion out on the floor for the kids to look at, and when my two-year-old sprayed some water on it it came alive and started running around, trying to sting everything in sight. Ahem. Had we not just established that it was NOT DEAD?, I asked. She said something about thinking that it must have finally died after sitting in the cup for a good ten minutes (hah!), but it was all moot now since she'd put it down the disposal.


So it would appear that I was way too naive in believing that my scorpion woes were over. Though, to my credit, how could I have imagined that there are people out there who intentionally bring scorpions into houses?

The fact that this all happened before 9:30 AM on the first day of her visit leaves me slightly concerned about what this weekend has in store.


=============== UPDATE ===============

Later that day, the truth came out that the scorpion was indeed quite alive when my mother-in-law caught it outside. Though she did think that the hour it spent sitting in a covered cup in my kitchen would have killed it (hah). A couple of thoughts here:

• So. What if she and the kids had been outside when I woke up? I would have walked into the kitchen, seen a stray cup on the kitchen counter, and oh-so-naively thought, "Hmm, what's in here?" as I picked it up to look inside. I'm not even going to think about what my reaction might have been.
  
  
• Speaking of things I'm not going to think about...so my toddler and crawling baby were involved in corralling an angry scorpion into a shallow cup. And I was worried that they might have too many cookies while their grandmother was here!
  

========= PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT =========

I keep expecting to receive a letter from the Texas Department of Tourism begging me to cease and desist with all scorpion-related content. I do feel bad that multiple people have vowed never to set foot across state lines again after reading my posts on this subject. I should note that there are only a few isolated neighborhoods around here that have this problem. I just got lucky.

Q: What is more terrifying than a scorpion?

A: A scorpion that you thought was dead but turns out to be an angry, un-dead scorpion out for revenge.

Have you ever seen one of those horror movies where it's getting close to the end and the heroes finally kill the monster...but it was a little too easy? And as they're casually high-fiving each other and turn their backs on the monster you want to scream, "Look out! He's not dead yet!", and sure enough, he suddenly comes back to life to terrorize them a bit more before the movie ends.

That's kind of how it went down around here this morning.

The exterminator came yesterday, and it would appear that his fancy chemicals worked (or perhaps the scorpions all killed themselves after hearing one too many unsolicited opinions). This morning I walked into my dining room to see the disturbing-yet-somehow-satisfying sight of a dead scorpion on my living room floor.

Now, Old Jen would have covered it with some heavy object for my husband to deal with when he came home. But I am now New Very Holy and Catholic Jen who selflessly does things to help others, so I decided to scoop the thing up myself so that my husband has one less thing to do when he comes home tonight. I calmly, gracefully grabbed a sheet of paper and bent down to slide it under the curled up, dead scorpion. I pictured it sliding onto the paper like a dead leaf for me to whisk over to the toilet.

As soon as the paper touched it it unrolled into a much larger, much angrier, much less dead scorpion who was now running around just stinging everything in sight. New Very Holy and Catholic Jen let out a blood-curdling scream, uttered a slew of profanity that would make a sailor blush, threw a book on the thing and called my husband to shriek at him about dealing with it as soon as he walks through the door tonight.

This is, however, the final data point I needed to prove once and for all that the sole purpose of scorpions' existence is "to be creepy". Some examples:

• They evidently have a penchant for only pretending to be dead (see above).
• They glow in the dark.
• They just look creepy with those pincers and that stinger-tail.
• Their venom is specifically formulated to be painful.
• They seem to hang out in beds and shoes a lot. Other nasty insects like roaches or spiders usually have the decency to confine themselves to kitchens or garages or attics, but it would appear that the primary habitat for Centruroides vittatus is "the beds and shoes of people who know Jennifer F."
  

And, finally, I recently read that fossil records indicate that these things have been hanging out being creepy for like 450 million years. They have an incredibly high tolerance to radiation and it's thought that nothing short of inter-planetary collision could wipe them out. So you kind of get the feeling that though I may have conquered them here in my house, the rest of them are thinking, "Whatever. In the end, we win."


[Administrative Note: I have finally come to terms with the fact that I will not be able to shut up about this until the last scorpion is gone from my house, so I have created a Scorpions category and will be updating the older posts.]

When casual conversation turns controversial

The exterminator came today. (Why would I need an exterminator? Welcome, new reader! You can read of my woes here, here, here and here). As I followed him around with comments like, "Spray more there...more over there..." and, "Can you just unscrew the lid on that thing and start dumping chemicals everywhere?" we chit-chatted about various topics.

He mentioned that his brother and sister-in-law were 16 weeks pregnant with their first child. After I said congratulations, he continued on that they're going to schedule an amniocentesis "to make sure there are no abnormalities or anything," since that's more accurate than a blood test and they want to be sure. I nodded and there was an uncomfortable silence, so he continued, "Because, you know, it wouldn't be right to bring a child into this world who wouldn't have a good quality of life." He continued on to tell me the story of a child he knows who has Down's Syndrome, and how the child's parents have had a lot of stress because of it, and the child can't even have a "normal" life. He strongly implied that it would be better if that child's life had been ended in utero.

I took that opportunity to allow the Holy Spirit to work through me and told him something so profound that he will surely change his heart on this matter. I said, "Uh-huh."

He replied that he could see from our house that we were Catholic, and that he probably shouldn't have said anything. (The fact that he could tell from our house that we were Catholic and that therefore he knew a lot of things about me was a very cool moment, and one I will probably discuss in a future post.) Seeing that he was waiting for me to say something, in a true testament to my social awkwardness and desire to avoid uncomfortable moments, I muttered, "Well, yeah, I understand that."

Allow me to translate. When I said, "I understand that," what I meant was: "I know where you're coming from because I used to say things like that too but I've come to believe that that is wrong seeing as how it involves humans deciding whose life is worth living and the grisly killing of babies who are almost old enough to survive outside the womb and all but I'm just going to throw out something vague like 'I understand' because I don't want it to feel all weird in here."

Clearly any response other than the one I gave would be better...but what? I'm so incredibly non-confrontational that it's hard for me to even think of what the right response would be. What are we supposed to do in situations like this? What is the right reaction when someone expresses a view that you find very disturbing as part of casual chit-chat? Do you keep the good vibes going and just let it slide? Do you make sure that your views are heard and risk seeming pushy or starting an argument?

I've had this sort of thing happen before and I never know what to do. Today, as is usually the case, I didn't feel anger toward the exterminator and didn't want him to think I thought he was a bad person or anything, but I did eagerly want to find some polite way to stand up for my beliefs. But, alas, as usual, I said nothing.

What do you do in these kinds of situations?

Scorpions, you have crossed the line

Guess what I found in a box of clothes in the baby's room yesterday. A $50 bill! No, kidding. It's not that kind of house. Any guesses what I actually found, about three feet away from the baby's crib? Yeah. A scorpion.

For new readers or hopelessly optimistic longtime readers, I should clarify that, unfortunately, I am not referring here to the glamrock band who rocked us all like a hurricane with their 1984 album Love at First Sting. As terrible as that would be, I'm talking about the real, pincer- and stinger-having, hiding-in-shoes, getting-wrapped-up-in-sheets-at-night arachnids.


I mentioned here and here that I strongly prefer that my bedroom be a scorpion-free zone. I have been, you might say, "distressed" about seeing scorpions in my bathroom and bedroom. But when I see them in my baby's room, right by her crib, it's time to get medieval on some scorpion a**. The exterminators are coming next week, and I want them to be tearing down walls and ripping up foundation and just dumping chemicals everywhere.

Meanwhile, my husband and I have become a sort of scorpion factoid clearing house, with coworkers and friends and blog readers regaling us with their favorite scorpion trivia and offering tales of being stung. Every time I learn something new about these things it gets worse. For example, my husband was telling his assistant that one of the ones we saw wasn't all that big, which was refreshing. The assistant pointed out that that was most likely a baby, which means they're hatching in our house.

Also, well-meaning people keep trying to reassure me by telling me things that only serve to horrify me further. One popular tidbit is that scorpion stings are no worse than wasp stings. I AM TERRIFIED OF WASPS, so this information is not helpful. My mom told me that scorpions fluoresce under blacklight, so I should get one to try to find them at night. Umm...does the thought of turning off all the lights in my house and using a blacklight to illuminate a bunch of GLOWING SCORPIONS IN MY HOUSE not sound just a little too mind-bogglingly creepy to think about?! And, as I type this, I am on the phone with my dad who is telling me the story about how my grandfather (who lives a few miles from here) got one wrapped up in his pajamas while he slept. But, my dad assured me, he only got stung a few times and it really wasn't any worse than a wasp sting. Whew!

On the bright side, I have discovered an incredibly effective way to get your mother to insist on paying for the best pest control service in town to come to the house and give you their Platinum Package. When going out to dinner with your husband and leaving the kids with her, just say this, as I did last night:

"I left clean diapers and jammies in the bathroom for after bath. The baby has already eaten but DB still needs dinner. Hmm...am I forgetting anything? Oh, yeah, be sure to check the baby's crib for scorpions before you put her in. Thanks! We'll be back in a couple hours."

I promise that one day I will resume regular content and stop writing about scorpions. (Although that may require setting up a separate Scorpions in My House blog since I cannot seem to stop talking about it). Meanwhile, check out all these awesome links.

A thought to close the day

Another day draws to a close. Time to shut down my computer, turn off the lights, and give my weary body a rest. I reflect back on the challenges and the joys of this day, wonder if I served God at each moment, feel content with my labor. And as the sun dips below the horizon and the evening draws nigh, I close my day with this thought:

Scorpions are nocturnal.

Greetings from the House 'O Scorpions

So guess what was on the wall by my bed last night? That's right. A scorpion. In my bedroom. Right by my bed (which, as I mentioned, I strongly prefer to be a scorpion-free zone). Had I turned out the lights just a few moments earlier, I would not have seen it scurrying up the wall, where it would have undoubtedly gone to the ceiling and then promptly fallen off when it was right over my bed (you laugh, but this actually happened to my uncle!)

My husband suggested that we should ask around to see if our neighbors are having scorpion issues as well. What, I ask, could possibly be gained from this? What if they say no? When my nextdoor neighbor says, "Gee, no, I've never seen a scorpion in my house!" is when things start feeling all Amityville Horror around here.

As I was lying in bed awake last night, in between fits of frantically brushing myself off every time the sheet or my pajamas brushed against me, I spent some time calculating the odds that one would actually see a scorpion if it were in the house. My house is 1,900 sq. ft. The scorpions are a few inches long. According to my calculations, the odds of being in the right place at the right time to actually see one of these things is about one in a zillion. And since I've seen TWO in my house in the past THREE days, this means that our home is teeming with them.

I see even the most common household objects differently now that I know that I'm living in some sort of scorpion Four Seasons. Some examples:




One theory here is that these things were somehow planted by the local exterminator company. Because, let me tell you, I am not what they call a "price-sensitive" customer right now. As soon as I hit Publish I am going to the first exterminator whose contact info I can find and tell them to just get in their truck and start driving and I'll give them all the details while they're on the road. (Very typical me that I'd blog about before actually doing something about it).

Another theory is that this is God's plan to change the way I feel about roaches. They seem like the most darling little creatures right now, perhaps something one even might want as a household pet. When we first moved in I hoped we wouldn't have a roach problem like many people around here do. Now the possibility of seeing Brother Roach on my wall seems almost charming. They don't have stingers. They don't have pincers. I'll take roaches over scorpions any day.

[Cross-posted to my other blog, because I just can't say enough about this.]

Brother Scorpion, Sister Mosquito

It would appear that God's plan for my life has something to do with scorpions. I saw yet another one on the kitchen floor this morning, which was actually less disconcerting than the one that was running at me on my bathroom floor a couple weeks ago (a terrifying seven feet away from my bed, where I SLEEP, that I prefer to be a scorpion-free zone). My house is full of them*.

But I digress.

Meanwhile, I've been thinking a lot about St. Francis, and trying to use his model of love, charity, simplicity and unrestrained joy at all of God's creation in my daily life. The problem I'm having is with that last one. You see, St. Francis lived in Assisi, Italy. I live in central Texas.

I admire the simple beauty of his lovely Canticle of the Sun, and am really trying to find that sort of ecstatic joy in God's amazing creations that are all around me. And, indeed, some days I too feel overjoyed by simply noticing Brother Sun and Sister Moon.

It really starts to break down, however, when I see Brother Scorpion on my kitchen floor. I know that these are God's amazing creations and all, but I am not at a level of spiritual maturity when I can appreciate God's creations of the stinger- and pincer-having variety in my house.

I also don't feel particularly Franciscan when Brother Sun and Sister Humidity are in full force around mid-July, and when Sister Baseball-Sized Hail causes $2,000 in damage to our car. That vague itching sensation reminds me not to forget Sister Mosquito, and the neighbors say we have some Brother Rattlesnakes to watch out for in the area behind my back yard fence. Did I mention Sister Six-Inch Millipede With These Crazy Fang-Looking Things who I met on my front porch yesterday?

So...I am trying to soak in the beauty of God's creation all around me, but I have to admit it's a lot easier in, say, February. As the Texas summer begins and we are reminded once again that we are living in a climate inhospitable to human life, it becomes a little more difficult to live by St. Francis' example. But I suppose that it really is all something to marvel at: the symmetry, the complexity, the simplicity of everything around us. It really is all wondrously beautiful, if you look at it the right way. Even Brother Scorpion.


* By "full of them" I mean I've seen six scorpions within the past couple of months. Though the case could be made that an average scorpion-sighting rate of 0.75 per week does not a "HOUSE FULL OF SCORPIONS!!!!" make, it's far more than enough to meet my definition.