Um...Is There a Venomous Arachnid Cycle on My Dishwasher?

Well, yet again I'm apologizing for neglecting my blog for a few weeks. Apparently I've been too busy actually doing stuff to get around to writing about it, which is a good thing for me, but too bad for you, because the past few weeks have been really interesting!

So, I had fully intended to catch up you up tonight - to regale you all with tales of our adventures of late. We had our first houseguest: my mom, whom I miss terribly, flew out for 5 days last week, and we had an amazing time. We discovered the Tucson Botanical Gardens, and loved it so much we bought a family membership. The gorgeous furniture we ordered arrived, and the house is 95% unpacked and looking really, really nice. Maddy has finally potty-trained, thank goodness, at almost 3 years and 10 months of age - whew. Andrew, while STILL not nightweaned, is at least spending a good portion of the night in a toddler bed in his own room. And my hair is once again blonde-ish and straight, after having been red and curly for nearly a year.

But all of that will have to wait until tomorrow's post, because this evening, some much better blog-fodder presented itself - I came within about one inch of being stung by a deadly Arizona bark scorpion.

OK, so they're not *that* deadly. I'm told there have only been a handful of bark-scorpion deaths in Arizona, and anyway, an antivenom was developed a couple of decades ago. Still, it's supposed to hurt like hell if you get stung. Yet in most cases, scorpion stings are similar to bee stings - though more painful, and likely to cause numbness, tingling, and blurred vision in additional to more swelling. Unless the victim is a small child, or has a particular allergy to scorpion venom, it's usually not an emergency (although around here, they advise going to the ER if you're stung and have any significant reaction, since some people do have respiratory or cardiac issues hours later.)

So, have you all canceled your plans to visit us yet? :)

I knew this would happen eventually. Scorpions, like heat and cactus and damn good margaritas, are just a fact of life here. In talking to other moms, some told me they find a scorpion once in a while, some a little more often, some haven't seen one in years. Our Realtor said she'd only found a single one in her home since she moved into it eight years ago, but then again, she was trying to sell us a house here. Still, everyone who learned we were transplants to Arizona gave us the standard warning: wear slippers when walking around the house and sandals when in the yard, shake out shoes and clothes before putting them on, inspect chairs, beds, etc. before plopping down on them, teach children never to stick their hands into cracks and crevices - it's rare to find scorpions, they'd say, but it does happen, so just use common sense.

Well, we've lived here almost two months now, and had seen exactly two bugs in the house - tiny little cricket-type things that didn't bother anyone. So, I'd relaxed a bit on the precautions.

Anyway, before leaving the house this morning, I had opened the dishwasher door a few inches, and left it that way while we were out. I routinely do this because I HATE towel-drying dishes. I don't like leaving them out all over the counter on a rack, but I find it such a pain to dry each item before putting it away. With the climate here, everything air-dries quickly (even lay-flat-to-dry clothing, which is nice!) So when the dishwasher finishes, I open the door a bit, and when I come back to unload it, everything is dry and ready to be put away.

We came home in the early evening, and shortly thereafter I sent Steve out to El Pollo Loco to grab takeout dinner for us. (This is an awesome place that makes the *best* Mexican flame-grilled chicken. Seriously delicious stuff - for like $15 you can get their family meal, with lots of yummy and healthy marinated broiled chicken, sides (the kids LOVE their refried beans with cheese, and their mac and cheese), homemade corn tortillas and homemade red and green salsas - the green one is like nothing I've ever tasted before!) Anyway, he left, I got the kids settled, glanced at my email, and then went to unload the dishwasher from the morning.

I opened the door and reached into the silverware basket. Through the jumble of Mickey forks and Princess spoons, I saw it - a long tail curved upward with a razor-sharp tip slowing waving back and forth, pointed directly at my hand.

I did a double-take. I slammed the dishwasher door shut. And then, I laughted. Hysterically.

Steve thought for sure I would have screamed, but I laughted - and I have no idea why. Maybe, for a split second, I thought it was some sort of a joke, like the plastic spiders we hid on each other at Halloween. Maybe it's just that the scorpion is a pretty funny-looking thing. Maybe it just sounds funny to say, "There's a scorpion in my dishwasher!" Or maybe it was the incredulity of it all, the realization that I, a city girl from New York by way of Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia, really am living in the Sonoran desert. The homogenization of America - the fact that you can be practically anywhere in the country and find the same stores, restaurants, style of homes, TV programs, radio stations - sometimes leads us to forget exactly where we are. And by and large, when it comes to animals, insects, and vegetation, much of America is similar, if not exactly the same. But here I was, face to face, or rather finger to telson (yes, I've learned some new vocabulary - that's the technical name for the tip of the tail, which isn't actually called a tail either, and which is the organ that "envenomates," or stings) with a creature that looked like nothing I have ever seen, anywhere. It was almost comic - the only time I'd ever seen anything like it was at the touristy gift shops around here, where they sell scorpion paperweights and scorpion magnets and scorpion postcards and lollipops with scorpions inside (no joke - Teresa asked the saleswoman if people actually eat the lollipops, and she answered, "Honey, I have no idea what people actually do with them, but they sure do buy them!") But the fact that American tourists will buy any junk put in front of them at a souvenir stand is also a post for another time. And besides, right next to the scorpion lollipop was a margarita-flavored one with a real worm inside, and I actually considered getting that for my brother.

So, dishwasher door firmly closed and kids out of the room, I called Steve. Our conversation went something like this:

Steve: "Oh, no, I'm next in line at Pollo, don't tell me you're changing your order again."
Me: "No, it's an emergency! We have our first scorpion in the house! You have to come right home!"
Steve: "Where is it?"
Me: "Would you believe, in the dishwasher?"
Steve: "What?! Wait, do you really want me to come home, without dinner?"
Me: "Um, well, I guess not - he's not going anywhere - just hurry though! Hey, should I maybe just run the dishwasher on hot and kill it that way? He'll drown, or the hot water will kill him?"
Steve: "NO WAY! ARE YOU NUTS?! YOU MUST BE CRAZY! You can't do that! He could clog up the dishwasher and break it! Or melt all over! Or break apart and we'll have scorpion pieces all over! Just wait for me!"

I then called my mom, which was probably a mistake, because she is afraid of all bugs. She told me she'd read something about how bugs can flatten themselves out to fit through the tiniest cracks, and was I really sure he couldn't escape the dishwasher? I reasoned that the seal on a dishwasher door had to be waterproof, obviously, and that if there were a space through which a bug could squeeze out, then surely water would leak out. This seemed logical to us, but I still stood in the kitchen watching the diswasher until Steve got home. And, I was relieved that her first thought was, "Can you just run the dishwasher and drown it?" So apparently, I'm not THAT crazy.

I turned the situation over to him. "You're all about the traditional gender roles, right? So, I nurse the babies and you squash the killer insects. Good luck!" But Steve was almost as scared as I was - moreso that in the pursuit of the scorpion, he'd escape the dishwasher and run and we'd have to spend all night trying to get it out of the house.

Our driver, back when we were flown out to visit Arizona in December, had told us that the local fire department will come take care of things like poisonous snakes and black-widow spiders. "Do you think they'll come get the scorpion?" Steve asked. I had visions of the fire department arriving, sirens blaring, and me, already in my nightie, explaining to our new neighbors that no, nothing is on fire - we just have scorpion in our dishwasher. "No," I told him, "scorpions can be dangerous, but I don't think they rise to the level of fire-department rescue."

But then I had an idea - I had a file of pest control service ads I'd clipped, since setting up regular extermination treatment was on my list of things to do as it gets warmer here. I grabbed the first one that had a line that read, "24-hour emergency visits" and called. The nice gentleman who answered informed me, in an only slightly condescending tone, that here in Southern Arizona, scorpions are not exactly considered an emergency. "Ma'am," he said, "the only thing that qualifies for an emergency visit on a Sunday around here is swarming Africanized bees." (Oh great, them again.) I was, however, quite gratified that even the exterminator said, "Can you just run a rinse cycle and kill it in the dishwasher?" At that point, even Steve considered it!

In the end, we Googled "how to kill scorpion" and decided on a plan A and B. Plan A would be for Steve to use my long cooking tongs (now retired from cooking, I promise!) to grab the scorpion and deposit it in a jar, then close the jar tight and dispose of it. (The online recommendation was actually to drop it into a jar of rubbing alcohol. We had no alcohol, but we did have a jar of applesauce, which we figured would work....somehow.) Plan B, if the scorpion escaped before Steve could grab it (they can't see well, but they're fast!) would be to drop the Sunday newspaper on top of it and squash it (they're hard to squash though - they can flatten out but stay alive!)

Steve hesitated for a few minutes, planning his attack and gathering all his manly courage. ;) But he finally did it - and plan A worked. Once the scorpion was tightly sealed in the applesauce jar, the kids all wanted to see it, and watch it, and find out if it was eating the applesauce or smothering in it, so Steve enjoyed a little science experiment with them while I set out the chicken. In the meantime, I re-ran that load of dishes. On pot scrubber, and hi-temp. And I think I'll run it couple more times.

And when it's finished, hand me a dish towel.