Just happened to glance out the slider this morning and saw one of our dogs nose to nose with this critter on the back patio… had to get her away from it double quick before she learned they are not friendly the hard way!
I think he had already been poisoned by the way he was acting since our home and yard get a monthly treatment from our exterminator… but I gave him a couple dousings of acetone then later flipped him over to deliver a fatal penetrating wound when the acetone hadn’t quite finished him off….
Biggest one that I’ve seen here yet. Tough critter too! That armor is hard!
In central Arizona, they live in the palm trees among other places. In high school I used to have a job trimming palms. Every once in a while you’d lop off a big frond and the critters would pop out and scare the !@#$$^% outa you. The smaller ones are actually more hazardous than the big ones, but I’m not particularly fond of either.
My uncle who lived for decades in Morenci AZ used to terrify us as kids with dire warnings of always having to shake your shoes out before slipping them on, lest one of those critters had found a cubby-hole there.
('Course…since we lived in suburban Chicago…they were a little bit less of a threat…) [:D]
I like bugs, but that scorpion looked really mad! The ones we have here are smaller and not terribly aggressive. They are tough little buggers, like yellow jackets and carpenter bees.
I don’t do cockroaches though. Don’t like them. Nope, nope.
Got them all over Oregon…wood scorps in the SW part of the state, little red/brown maybe inch to two. Central Oregon has their yellow buggers, inch to two. Either under rocks, down wood of dried cowpies
When I visit my buddy in San Anotonio I occasionally see them. Never seen one that big. I have a client that has a few in a tank. To me that’s just weird. Never liked the things. It probably started in high school. Our rival high school was the Scorpions. Unless it’s hearing “Rock You Like A Hurricane” I want nothing to do with scorpions. The devils insect. That’s all I got for scorpion jokes.
Im with you there. Love that band, don’t like the critters! I guess this species has one of the strongest venoms from what I’ve read. From a big boy like this I’m sure that would be pretty bad.
Back when I was going through S.P. combat school at Camp Bullis in 1971 I had to guard teh class armory one night. I watched as ants held down a scorpion while others widened the opening to the colony. When it was big enough they dragged it down. It may have been only about two inches or so long but it didn’t matter.
That is one very nasty bug Stik and you can have him! We have scorps in tthe area where I live, but only little black things about an inch long. Don’t think the’re poisonous.
That is the only thing I like about living in a cold weather state, it keeps the creepy crawlies to a more manageable size. My family in Arizona would always tell stories of tarantulas, wolf spiders, black widows, and scorpions. I’d love to go visit, but as an arachnaphobe I think it would be a vacation spent in a constant state of paranoia.
But the Gila’s are fairly easy to deal with, just don’t get near them mouth. Rattlers, you take precautions like not stepping over logs, watch where you put your hands if you’re running around in rocky areas. Not sure fire, but takes 70% out of the equation. Grew up around hot tails.
I remember back in the mid 70s opening my mom’s heavy and large flip up garage door and finding a huge scorpion on the bottom of the door an inch or two away from my hand! Thank God that beast was asleep otherwise I would have gotten a nasty sting. Using a stick I dropped him into a small glass jar and filled it with iso alcohol then put the top on and kept it for several years.
