Creepy and Crawly!!!

I live in Arizona.  I grew up in Oregon.  When I lived there, there were bugs. There were the most beautiful garden spiders black and yellow/orange. They made huge webs on the back pouch and she became my pseudo pets. I always named them Charlotte.  I would come out of the house after a good rain to see the web glistening in the light, like a stained glass window pane.  The dutiful spider sitting in her web was waiting for the next fly or mosquito. We had rolly polly bugs that rolled up in ball when you touched them, good-luck lady bugs, and even the annoying, bump creating mosquitoes. They were always lots of bees and flies buzzing around.  When I grew up I knew there poisonous bugs, but frankly the bugs that lived around me were my friends. I was in awe of their abilities and their lives.  Then I moved to Arizona

 

Now Arizona creatures are exotic compared to the insects I remember.  First there are scorpions. I have had a bitter relationship with them this summer.  What's worse, there are more than one kind of scorpion.  Scorpions are poisonous.  In my garage this summer was a 3 inch bark scorpion, laying in wait for a wonderful wolf spider living out there.  I just picked up a piece of cardboard and there he was.  Now I have read their exoskeletons are hard.  So you need to hit them with something hard, a shovel or hammer.  I pick up the soft end of the broom and stabbed at him, and so he ran away.  Just so you know my son found him a couple of days later, hit him with a hammer and grandpa scorpion was dead.  Not before he got my wolf spider though, she was gone too. I did find one in my closet though, so she might have just moved indoors where the scorpions were not as prevalent.  Most of the time scorpions are not fatal, but who wants to discover they have some problem they don't know about, that makes them the exception, not me.

The wolf spider threw me off also, as they are huge (the size of a quarter) and look like they have fur on their bellies.  However, they are not poisonous, and usually leave humans alone unless bothered.  They live on and under things, and don't build a web. I usually checked on her a couple of times a night.  She had favorite places she sat. I found her a week or two before the scorpion.  

Then the scorpions came indoors. One night I was cleaning up the sink in the kitchen. I look up and there is a baby sitting on the backdrop behind the sink tail up, just looking at me.  He was about 3/4 of an inch. So I took a hammer and crushed him.Then I called an exterminator.  I saw about 5 before the exterminator came and none since. I live in a newly developed suburb, and my neighbors had horrible problems with the invaders. It required them moving their beds away from the walls to keep the scorpions down.  One thing I learned is that people put drinking glasses around the legs of baby cribs. They can't seem to crawl up glass.

We also have a relative of the brown recluse who is called the Arizona Brown Recluse.  He has same venom, but not as damaging as the original.  We have rattlesnakes, tarantulas (timid things, and I kinda like them), a coral snake, and the worst offenders besides our scorpion infestation are the Africanized  Honey Bees.  Frequently you hear someone in the hospital from swarming bees.

We have mosquitoes that carry the West Nile Virus. This year it seems to really more prevalent in Texas.  So we have a state of creepy crawly things that can bite, sting and even KILL you. I have left off the fungus in the dirt that can invade your lungs with Valley Fever, and field mice that can carry Hanta Virus.  I have left off the fire ants,  don't you think we have enough already?  

It is not that we have these things, many states do, it is that we have all of them.  We have bear attacks in the woods too, but for the sake of this blog I want to sick more arachnid-insect-reptile focused.  The small creatures that share our space with. So you really do have to be one tough cowboy to live in the desert.  Me?  I am learning you throw a few bucks at exterminators, find house with a pool, and you can live pretty comfortably here.  Not only that Arizona has some marvelous sunsets!!