unwanted animals

HeLLo Monday!

Yeah, you just thought this post was gonna be about all the sad little kittens and puppies at the Humane Society.

*Actually, on a somewhat serious note, shelters are simply flooded this time of the year. And the animals there are very sad and largely unwanted. I see them every week. But since the only pet I own came from a breeder, I shall refrain from standing on an pro-adoption soapbox.*

No, this post is about the thing I found in my bathroom last week. It had eight legs, two pinchers, and a venomous stinger. I saw it and died. Then I thought about spraying it with Raid… and decided fumigating myself wouldn’t get me anywhere. Then I decided to catch it in a small tupperware… and tried not to scream when it took off across the floor.

Where I grew up in Southeast Asia, scorpions were a common sight. They randomly resided in our house beneath furniture or inside cabinets, crawled up the outside window screens at night, and walked across my mother’s foot during a Sunday morning church service. I wish I was kidding. How big were these obnoxious creatures, you ask? Only the size of a small guinea pig. Now you understand why I might need therapy.

So let’s be clear about one thing. I shot these pictures of the scorpion in my bathroom with a 100mm macro lens. Here it is next to a dime for size comparison.

Before you scoff, let’s be clear about something else. Size matters not. A scorpion is a scorpion is a scorpion. And also, I do not like them here or there, I do not like them ANYWHERE.

It goes without saying that I didn’t sleep very well after catching the booger. There were things crawling over my feet all night. Then… oh then. The next day I was sitting here at my desktop Skyping with Caleb and between discussing the logistics of bench pressing 225 (him, not me) and the latest mutt I almost brought home from the shelter, he looks over my right shoulder and calmly goes,

“There’s a lizard on the floor behind you.”

“Very funny.”

“No. Really.”

Please note: If I wake up tomorrow morning and find a snake, you can reach me at the nearest hotel until further notice.