10.18.2010

Creepy and Crawly

There are too many creepy crawly things have been an active part of my life lately. A few weeks ago, the big tree in our side yard fell on our garage. Cause of death--the center of the tree's trunk had been eaten out by cockroaches and bees who made a home in it. Now there are hundreds of homeless bees and roaches in my yard. Excellent.

The day after their tree fell the roaches decided to move into our place. Fortunately, they have yet to succeed (to the best of my knowledge). The brave ones enjoyed sneakily lurking by the front door in an attempt to dart in as we came out. Chris made an example of these daredevil trespassers and left their squashed remains on the front porch for their roachy friends to see. The colony got the idea (assuming they are more intelligent than they deserve credit for) and have instead decided to burrow in the crack between our front door and the foundation of our house. Lovely. Not what we hoped for, but better than the alternative.

The creepy crawly continued when Chris and I offered to tend our cousins this weekend. They have a gorgeous home surrounded by more foliage and flowers then you will find in all of Arizona combined. This garden is a refuge for butterflies, bumble bees, lady bugs... and other things.

In Wyoming it's common practice to spotlight deer for a thrill. Here people spot light (or more accurately, "black light") scorpions. Anyhow, during our babysitting adventures, Chris thought it would be a good idea to take the kids black lighting before bed, and it was the coolest/creepiest thing. The cool part was the way the scorpion's skeletal bodies would glow eery green in the purple light right before we would---STOMP. The creepy part was how MANY there were and how easy they were to find. The scorpions would be lurking in the most common places--next to the front door, under a pot, on the sidewalk...



These suckers were huge! As Chris and I took turns poking them with a stick, and you could feel the power of their armored bodies lashing their tail meanly back.

After stomping on a few scorpions and feeling like we had done the world a favor in doing so, we came inside feeling safe and separate from the threat they posed. However, it wasn't long before Hanna, one of our cousins, calmly said, "Chris, there is a scorpion on the wall." Gulp. The black lighting was a little premature for me--I would rather be living in ignorance.

3 comments:

  1. Yucky yuck!!! Roaches are the worst thing in the world!! That is the one thing I was grateful to leave behind in Vegas...and the scorpions as well! I'm just glad we never had them like you do! It was very rare that we actually saw them around my area of town. So sick. Way to not freak out and do the creepy dance every time you see them...unless you do; there's nothing wrong with doing that fancy dance. ;)

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  2. Creepy. At least you can make them glow in the dark. If I were you I would get a black light night light so you can easily identify them if they're crawling on you.

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