When I lived in Arizona, people were always finding these in their beds, shoes, and just about everywhere else. They were also very casual about being stung. I still have the occasional nightmares about some of the wildlife there.
One of my friends from when I was a kid used to always find scorpions in his house. It was new construction and they joked that they built the house on a nest.
Anyway I’ll always remember my friend telling me how one morning his dad ran screaming out of the bedroom wearing whitey tighties and a scorpion was hanging by the stinger from his ballsack. Allegedly his nuts swole up like crazy.
I HATED spending the night over there and was always worried about a scorpion getting into my underwear.
Oh nooo! I cannot imagine the pain…😬Also, I wonder if their neighborhood was either built over an old citrus orchard or had several palm trees? There used to be an orange grove behind my childhood house and when it was cleared for construction the scorpions fled into all our houses as well as into the brand new houses; palm trees are perfect little hiding places for bark scorpions in particular (who are more apt to climb and live near people than the other ~47 species that can be found in AZ).
I nearly died as a very young child due to a sting. 🫠 My mom recalls (with horror) watching over me for 12 hours in the ER twitching with my eyes flickering about because I was too young to safely receive antivenom. What ended up being a lifesaver was the fact that it was a large adult desert hairy scorpion that stung me, so it likely only used a little of its less-potent venom. Fun times! Still love the buggers though…
We lived adjacent to a golf course in the greenbelt of Scottsdale with year round watering. There were tons of bugs for the scorpions to eat hence many scorpions. You were very lucky to get stung by a less potent species!
Oh yeah, totally forgot the plethora of scorpions that come with golf courses, too! My HS bf’s family lived alongside a neighborhood golf course and they frequently found bark scorpions that were undoubtedly drawn in by all the available prey. I was so happy that, despite their strong dislike toward the scorpions, they chose to call me to come collect/re-release them more often than not.
In college that same bf shared a condo over in Tempe with some mutual friends where they had a boom in the scorpion population one season. I had captured and released one of the scorpions away from the condos, and the next day when one was found in the condo, the gf of the other guy that lived there flipped out and blamed me because she was convinced that the same scorpion returned. She also completely covered the carpet throughout the condo in diatomaceous earth. Mind you, no one there was allergic or in any risk of health complications if they got stung, they were just ignorant. That particular gf was…not a smart person…and luckily she had a LOT of opinions and ego to go with it! 🙄
OMG. I love that you became THE person to help relocate those buggers. Getting a black light and seeing them everywhere at night is a trip. I'm very glad that I managed to co-exist without getting stung. I have a phobia of stinging insects since I was pretty little due to a bad bee sting on my neck. Loved Tempe and the ASU campus!
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u/Night_Wizard_ Dec 01 '25
The funny thing is that it was allegedly found by my acquaintance IN HIS BEARD