We were out at an Airbnb near Marble Falls this weekend, and on Thursday night, with Fargo sleeping peacefully a few feet from my feet, having yet to relieve herself since arrival and having barfed thrice from some combination of stress and scaling a large hill (I guess you never know with puppies, and fret not—she was fine by morning), I noticed something walking leisurely but purposefully across the house’s floor, dragging with it some cobwebs that I believe contained a dead fly.
It was a scorpion.
I had never before encountered a scorpion. One time, in January of 2015, I was in a cabin in Georgia in which a scorpion was found in the basement, but I did not encounter the scorpion, and merely was told of its discovery. This was new to me, but not wanting to wake Fargo, lest she take on the scorpion with her mouth, I tried to proceed quietly and calmly. I walked to the kitchen table. I unspooled nine or ten sheets of paper towel. I grabbed the scorpion, now just thirty or forty inches from Fargo’s head, attempting a near pass, by the body and squeezed.
I noticed rather quickly that the scorpion’s tale and one antenna (if scorpions have antennae—if they don’t, maybe it was a leg or something?) were still moving slowly, protruding from my grasp. I had access to my phone, so while holding on tight with one hand, I googled how to kill a scorpion, curious if squishing it was enough, and get this, The Internet™ said that you can’t kill some scorpions with squishing because THEY CAN FLATTEN THEIR BODIES?!?!? Not fair. Not cool, nature. If I squeeze something hard enough, it should die. That should be a rule.
With this knowledge, the decision was made to just throw the whole paper towel ball, scorpion and all, off the side of the porch outside and check it for a corpse in the morning, something that I think was wise because when I checked it in the morning there were just a few dark dots in the paper towel that I think were scorpion shit. Little terror took a dump in the attempted murder weapon and went on its way.
Obviously, I’m now curious. How dangerous are scorpions? Are you actually you supposed to stab a scorpion with a sharp object, as The Internet™ recommends? How common are scorpions? Should I expect to see scorpions regularly in Texas? Do scorpions often wear cobwebs as garments or was this one just feeling stylish?
Please share your scorpion knowledge with me. I’m still a little uneasy about the flattening capability.
