It all started on a Shabbat, too. Which is what we are celebrating tonight. Here goes...
Well it's more like a science project... but here is how we ended up at this:
Erev Shabbat, my mom was coming to visit and we were waiting outside for her arrival. I was wearing some capris with folded cuffs and sitting at our picnic table outside in the dark spending time with my hubby, my daughter and our dogs. Apparently as we waited there a scorpion was hunting for his dinner and came across this fold of fabric and crawled inside.
I, being none-the-wiser came in later after my mom arrived, came in the house, changed into my PJs and folded and placed my capris on the bathroom counter as they really were not dirty and I planned to wear them again soon.
Next day, about mid-afternoon, we were preparing to go to our Messianic Fellowship so I was in the bathroom at the sink (next to my folded capris on the counter) putting on makeup and fixing my hair. Suddenly out of the corner of my eye I notice a bit of movement... looking over I was astonished to discover a scorpion meandering through my belt loops on my capris!! "YIKES" I screamed, and I contemplated what do do.
I decided it might be best to close the drain in the sink and try and 'dump' him/her in there. The scorpion, still blissfully traveling across my capris, had now come to the far corner closest to the sink, so I took the opportunity and picked up the garment and shook it over the sink with the closed drain until he/she fell into the sink.
Now he/she was trapped. So I was thinking of course, I want to squish it so it can't harm me or my family. Well while I was waiting for my, at-the-time 'indisposed' hubby to arrive and rescue me (and now my daughter) we observed the little Scorpion who was not too happy with his/her current situation... he/she was running about in the sink trying to figure out how to get out of the sink. Well remember, I had been getting ready to go to our fellowship and there was a small, I mean miniscule puddle of water in the sink. The scorpion ran through the puddle and then calmed a moment and stooped down to get a drink of water!
How neat to see this little guy(?) drinking water. Then I had an idea! We have a spare aquarium we keep empty, mainly it's used for our baby cockatiels when we have them, but we haven't bred cockatiels in about 2 years. We also use the spare aquarium for little critters that have had a mishap. It's housed baby wild birds of different sorts from time to time mostly, but really hasn't seen any action in quite some time. Sooo, we put the scorpion in there with some rocks. As I said previously, we were preparing to gooo tooo fellowship. So this would have to do for now, and the scorpion approved upon find a rock he could climb on to and hide.
Later when we returned from fellowship, my daughter and hubby went out and and collected some sand that we had previously used to fill a hole on the side of the house. We only needed a little after all, just a small layer for a 10 gallon aquarium. Of course there were some other critters that came with the aquarium. There were about 3 or 4 ants running around like mad, and a tincy tiny spider. Later we found a tiny millipede crawling around in there. The next morning, I took an old pickle jar, and went out and found some breakfast for our little scorpion whom has now earned the name, Pinchy, from my daughter. I found 1 grasshopper, and 2 pinhead crickets. This morning, the 2 crickets are still alive, but the grasshopper was last seen running for it's life (he was missing a leg, and we found Pinchy with the missing leg grasped in his... pinchers). Kind of grim... I thought at that point, we may not keep little "Pinchy" much longer (I haven't yet told my daughter). Being that we kept him alive this long, we more than likely will release him towards the back of our property within the next few days.
We had met my oldest brother in town earlier in the day for lunch, their house is seemingly plagued with scorpions! He joked and asked if we would like them to simply send their scorpions to us instead of killing them. I just said maybe we could do a Scorpion WWF or something (of course I was just joking, but you know how brothers are with their sarcasm).
***UPDATE***
So, a few people wanted to know "What happened to Pinchy?" This is my response to that aching question:
"Yes, there is an update on Pinchy :)! Well a few weeks after housing Pinchy I kept letting dh and dd know that it was close to release time for the little guy/girl. I now think it was a boy because he was sort of smallish. Dd and I were out looking at some fossil rocks we had collected from our property and dh grew weary of seeing our fossil rock collection on his newly built picnic table so he put them in a spare pot that I had ready to transplant a little tree I've been growing. Well we were taking the rocks out of the pot to look at them and I was telling dd, "... please be careful, there could be snakes or scorpions." A few moments later, dd says, "...Mommy, you were right! There was a scorpion in there!!" Sure enough a big chubby scorpion... more than likely a female! So we decided to bring it in and introduce her to Pinchy. The ran about in the aquarium for the afternoon, no drama, they were very cordial together. I hear they do a little courtship dance when the meet to mate. I don't suppose they would have been up to that, it would have been funny to watch though. Anyhow, when dh returned home from work that evening he took the happy young couple to the back of our property and released them. Mazel tov! :) "
Until Next Time, Yah bless and keep you... Shalom!
Maritza Kelley
