Confessions of a New Englander in Texas

As a transplanted New Englander, I have found a lot to love in Texas. I love the big open sky, the breathtaking sunsets, the fact that not once, during the entire winter, did I have to put fifteen layers of clothing on the kids just to walk to the car. And I would probably be burned at the stake for this (well, only in Salem), but I love the central A/C! My hair doesn't frizz and I can actually sleep at night. Yep, I have embraced my Texas home, gotten a deep tan and spent more time outside than I have since childhood. Then last week my utopia shattered. It wasn't the tornado that hit a mile from our house, or even a week straight of triple digit temperatures that caused me to become this hollow-eyed parody of the newly-born Texan I'd become. No, it was a visit from the Texas Striped Bark Scorpion. Just typing the name makes me want to search under my chair and start rattling things in the bathroom.
Now don't get me wrong, I knew there were scorpions in Texas before we moved here. I had even seen a few under glass in the Boston Aquarium. They looked a little weird, but seemed docile enough. I took the necessary precautions- hired an exterminator as soon as we moved in, plugged weepholes, sealed around exterior doors and religiously shook out our shoes before putting them on. All safe and sound right? And then last week, I am innocently bathing my daughters, flip over the bathroom scales to clean up some water and there he is in all his three-inch glory. Mr. Striped Bark Scorpion in the flesh, huddled to the floor, tail over the head and ready for business...less than a foot from my face.
I was calm, I was rock-solid, I was cool as ice as I made the first strike. I squeaked and gingerly brushed at it with my hand towel. The scorpion employed confusion tactics and did something totally unpredictable. He dropped his tail and made a mad dash for the walk-in closet, no doubt intending to drop on my head later in a surprise ambush. With a war cry resounding in my head (ok maybe it was a few shrieks out loud, but who's writing this?) I valiantly took off my sandal and beat him to a smear on the ceramic tile. The victory won, I calmly retreated to the adjacent bedroom and had a complete nervous breakdown. I am ashamed to say the quiet hysterics worried even my stalwart husband who bravely went into the bathroom to clean up the remains. He emerged a moment later with the corpse (while I shrieked and made a panicked attempt to escape it in it's Kleenex death shroud) and merely said, Hillary 1, scorpion zero.
Despite our exterminators' best efforts we have sighted and killed eight more in the last few days, including one in our bed and another on the ceiling above my daughter's crib. No one has slept much the last few nights, my constant paranoia causing me to turn on all the lights several times a night to check our sheets, walls and bedcovers for sneaky scorpions trying to kill us in our sleep. The latest casualty being our hamster who escaped her cage, climbed up on our bed in the middle of the night and....nevermind, as I told the girls, she fell in love and ran off to get married.
Having discovered a website on organic scorpion control I have now barricaded our beds with glue boards, electronic pest reppellents and talcum powder and armed myself with a blacklight. My husband has handled this with his usual aplomb -though he has balked at the idea of getting a chicken, which I understand are amazingly adept at searching out and eating scorpions. Just recently though he asked me if I'd like to go back to Boston to visit for a couple of weeks. The scorpions must be getting to the poor guy.

NOTE: This is actually something I wrote several years ago while living in TX. It was my site's first post so there would be something to read here until I got a bit more prolific. It's old, but absolutely true! Thank heavens we now live elsewhere and are scorpion-free.