Sleeping with the enemy...

.... and the enemy is the scorpion. At least in my mind. I have to get myself to not be afraid of them, and turn myself into their worst enemy. If I don't, I will soon be a walking zombie. In the past two nights, I've had about five hours of sleep. I have discovered, during the past two nights, that as you get older, it's hard to sleep in a fetal position because your legs tend to cramp--- and I'm afraid now to let my feet get near the foot of the bed.
Once again last night, I kept waking up and shining a flash-light up to the ceiling, down to the floor, and then over and under the bedcovers. Once again, my husband slept soundly. Except for the time when I jumped up from my pillow and had my feet on the floor in two seconds flat because I thought something fell on my face. Something did, but it was only a piece of my own hair or an eyelash, because we were definitely the only two breathing things in the room.

First thing this morning, I changed the sheets on the bed. Off came the floral-print sheets, on went a plain beige sheet set. The floral sheets will never see the light of day again. (I can probably make zillions of quilt puffs with a set of king-sized sheets.)

I am still thinking about having an exterminator come out here and spray every blade of grass, every bush, every tree, every bit of mulch, every everything on the entire 23 acres. But I know it's not going to last... that the toxic spray will also kill the butterflies, dragonflies, and maybe even the baby birds and baby bunnies as well. And with the hopeful arrival of chickens this weekend, will it harm them as well as they go scouting around the grounds for crawling and flying things to eat? So I'm holding off on the agent-orange stuff, and hoping the chickens will take care of the spiders, flies, bees, wasps, crickets, and --most importantly -- the scorpions.

I did a Google search on scorpions, and so did my cousin F up in NY. She and I both found different sites, with an encyclopedia's-worth of information. (In this age of instantly updated technology, does anyone under the age of 40 even know what an encyclopedia is?)

Basically, it's hard to control the scorpion population-- even with insecticides. The best thing to do is to just keep them out of the house, which means sealing up every crack and crevice that you can find. The sites also suggest to keep trash away from the house, to keep rocks and bricks and bark away from doorways, and not to bring wood into the house unless you're putting it right on top of a roaring fire the minute you carry it in. If there are trees growing over the house, then trim the branches because scorpions are like spiders, but without webs-- they crawl up and on and all over the trees, and will drop from the branches onto the roof.

My cousin F read that the mama scorpion will have 20 or 25 babies at a time, and they will hang onto her back till they're old enough to get around on their own. Her advice was to look for the mama scorpion and swat her and all the babies-- she said I'd be eliminating at least 26 scorpions with just one good shot of hairspray and a few hard swats with my shoe.

Basically, my fear of scorpions has come to this: murdering a mother and her 25 babies so I can have a good night's sleep again.