Nice moon this evening

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It was good and bright in Vegas, but in one of the shadows it cast I found my biggest scorpion of the year. Usually they hide when there is going to be a good moon, but I guess this one was hungry. If I get keen I'll recover the corpse and photograph it next to a ruler of some kind.
 
I'm calling it the Scorpion Moon. I killed two more on my back wall tonight. It was windy, too, and that usually keeps them in their hidey holes.
Do you use a black light to spot them? I've lived in Vegas for 20 years and never seen one.
 
Do you use a black light to spot them? I've lived in Vegas for 20 years and never seen one.
I use a large, multi-LED blacklight (from Amazon, natch) and some very good UV cutting driving glasses I snagged from Walmart. For dealing out death I use Raid Max Spider and Scorpion in the black can. On windy nights a long, sharp screwdriver is handy.

You are either VERY fortunate where you live or you are not looking hard enough.:oops: When this neighborhood was built in the 90s, they shipped their palm trees in from nurseries in AZ, complete with the Arizona Bark Scorpion (ABS) and a few other non-native species. The ABS is the most venomous of scorpions in the US, and it is fast. It also has a temper like a rabid wolverine with a burr up its butt. I've been flat out charged by the damned things more than once. The only other bug I've seen with so much attitude is the Sun Spider.

My wife lived over near the Las Vegas Wash when we first met. The whole neighborhood crawled. Moisture means lots of soft bodied bugs, just what the scorpions love. Good management of the scorpions' food, followed by eliminating their hiding places in the yard are the first steps in control. Once you create hungry scorpions that have to come out into the open to hunt, you can pick them off at night. I have reduced the population here considerably. I used to be able to go out 3-4 nights a week and be guaranteed to nail three each visit. Now I am lucky to get any some weeks.

Best (worst?) night was the day after the neighbors had the pros in with the cedar spray to flush them. I killed two out front and nine in my backyard, seven of them being big ones sitting on the common wall.
 
Dang, Steve. Would give me the willies to live where there are that many scorpions around.

Do you hear regular screams from the neighbors as they get stung?
 
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