warning: gruesome description of bug killing

Yesterday I learned that if there's a bunch of pollen outside, waiting until evening to report what I learned doesn't work very well because it's hard to stay in the house where it's safe, and I get all stupid and tired by afternoon.

So last night I have a vague recollection of my husband spotting a scorpion near the coffee table, and it was healthy. We've been aware of only two scorpions that have made it into the house, and they were either dead or not feeling well, but they were both came in when we still had carpet instead of hardwood floors. So if you've been reading this blog with any regularity, you already know that I feel compelled to attribute their illness to carpet chemicals.

Back to the live, running scorpion. We corralled it in an applesauce jar, and then, since the previous two scorpions we sent to the family botanist didn't look right because they died of natural(ish) causes, we had to kill it so we could ship it. I'm not usually much for just up and killing stuff, but I was pretty out of it last night, and I was raised by people who value good bug collections, so I said, "Let's drown it in alcohol." I mean, if it had stung me, I'd be in pretty bad shape, and I knew I wasn't going to turn it loose, so I suppose I could have just squashed it and been done with it, but then the botanist wouldn't have had a good specimen with which to freak out students. Thus I learned that scorpions can swim around in alcohol for a while, looking quite irate. The result is that if you want that classic annoyed scorpion pose, with the tail up and the claws reaching, drowning it in alcohol is the way to go.

Then this morning I checked in with the botanist because it's polite to call before you just send someone a scorpion and learned that her yard, which she uses as a stockroom for plants to show students, is in one of the apple moth quarantine zones, so now she has to go buy samples. Also, there are apple moth quarantine zones.