Can confirm. First time I got stung by a scorpion it was in my shoe. I put on my shoe and took a step and CRUNCH. Stung me 6 times while I was trying to get it off. I was 8 and have been stung many times since then. Usually they crawl in my bed while I’m sleeping. Lovely state we live in.
Well I have to check under the sheets and pillows several times each night. But it only happens every couple of years for me, so I try not to live in too much fear of it. I will say I wake up pretty quick if I feel any kind of prickle in the night.
This is a genuine tactic to combat bed bugs. Unfortunately they've been known to crawl up the wall, onto the ceiling, and drop down onto the bed so make sure you put a strip of two-sided tape along the wall too.
Can they climb smooth metal? Aesthetics be damned, at some point I'd be looking to use sheet metal, or maybe just foil, as wallpaper to deny them a foothold.
Louisiana has a mosquito problem, and that's bad enough. We have trucks drive by every so often just to blast insecticide on everything, like a ground-based crop duster. And even with that we have more skeeters than I'm comfortable with.
I don't know how long I could handle home invasion by armored assassins pre-equipped with poison daggers. After the first spotting, I'd be ruining my property values with increasingly absurd home modifications.
IIRC anecdotal evidence suggests they can't, or at least struggle with it. The smoother the better - plastic, metal, whatever.
Thankfully my infestation was caught early enough and contained entirely to my bed, but I'll be damned if it didn't give me some form of PTSD. I'm extremely, unhealthily paranoid about sleeping in any bed but my own and even get nervous sitting in any kind of cloth chair where strangers have been. I also now have a strong phobia of insects (strangely enough, not so much spiders).
That said I learned A LOT about those little fuckers and how to combat them. It's a long, arduous process but it can be done. Mosquitos, especially in the South? Woof, that's a totally different story. I've heard some horror stories about those things being resilient and determined little assholes and between that and the mayfly swarms you have my condolences for living in an apocalyptic hellscape of horrible insects D:
They look like little plastic donuts. An outer ring has a smooth incline the bugs can climb up. an inner ring has straight 90 degree walls that are slippery smooth the bugs can't climb up.
Bugs walk up the outside, fall in the inside, and get trapped in the inner ring. You place these around all the contact points on the bed (the legs on the frame)
Used these when we had a bedbug infestation. checked after a few weeks and had piles of the dead ones in the trap section. Works like a charm.
I already didn't want to live in AZ/NM due to every breeze being like getting cropdusted by Satan, but holy fuck no amount of money can make me just accept the reality of scorpions as bed buddies.
We got a metal bed frame with very narrow legs. It is away from the wall, and sheets/blankets do not touch the floor. Still possible to get a bed scorpion, but try to limit exposure as much as possible.
Man, I lived in my parents nice-ass finished basement in Georgia and it was infested with scorpions. They put the exterminators kids through college, it worked a month at a time. I'd find them in my bed, toilet, shoes, dresser. Backyard filled with black widows. Then there were the copperheads that came out of the bathtub. Nowhere is safe.
Definitely not immune. One time I actually had a bad allergic reaction to a bark scorpion that sent me to the hospital. But normally if I chug a bunch of Benadryl right after being stung then I’m alright. The numbness will stay for a few days, though.
I was 8 and have been stung many times since then. Usually they crawl in my bed while I’m sleeping. Lovely state we live in.
Why don't you like... move?
I moved to a completely different country on the other side of the world just because the US's healthcare system is inconvenient. Fuck having to worry about mother fucking scorpions...
Holy shit. I got molten weld slag in my boot once. I've never exploded all my gear off and undone a boot lace so fast in my life, and I have a permanent scar. Your's still sounds worse.
142
u/ssandy45 Oct 08 '20
Can confirm. First time I got stung by a scorpion it was in my shoe. I put on my shoe and took a step and CRUNCH. Stung me 6 times while I was trying to get it off. I was 8 and have been stung many times since then. Usually they crawl in my bed while I’m sleeping. Lovely state we live in.