Unwelcome Visitors

The following three unwelcome creatures paid me a visit during the past month.

1.  Scorpion. I've had many visits from these during the past few years. They typically appear in the evening. I usually find them when I've been out, then come in and turn on the light.

I spotted this one on the wall after I turned on my desk lamp.

There are over 1,500 species of scorpions in the world and they all have a venomous stinger, but fortunately only about 25 are known to have venom capable of killing a human being.

The stings of the ones we have here are not dangerous, but they hurt like crazy!! I was stung for the first time a few months ago, on the foot, and it was like getting stabbed by a red-hot knife.

 
I've found that most of the time, scorpions don't move too quickly. They wait to see what will happen.

I debated on how to kill this one. I often use the "spray and smash" method for a scorpion on the wall. I spray it with insecticide, then when it drops onto the floor I smash it with the sole of my shoe.

This one, however, would have dropped onto the floor in the corner behind my desk--not the greatest place for me to squish it.

I know this will sound gruesome, but I ended up pinning it in the middle with a big knife and sawing it in two.







2.  Bat. One Saturday morning, as I sat at my kitchen table, I looked up and saw a bat crawling down the wall.


It's not very common to see bats during the day time. However, I have had a problem at times with bats "hanging out" during daylight hours behind a shelf unit in the corner of my counter.

They come in through small openings between my corrugated tin roof and the top of my wall.

You might think I would be happy to have a bat in my house because they eat things like mosquitos. However, they are a nuisance because they produce an incredible number of tiny droppings that quickly make a mess on the counter.


I got rid of this one by taking a broom, putting the handle end right below its head, and gently pushing up. It was rather comical because the bat clumsily backed right up and out.

3.  Snake.  I've never found a snake inside my house, and had only once seen one on my porch, until a month ago. Early one evening, as I was in my house getting something for a friend who was on my porch, she began shouting, "Snake, snake!" I went out and saw one lying a few feet from the door. 

My friend had seen the snake slither out from the crack between my doorframe and the wall (on the left side of the door). When it saw her, it started to go back in, but she jumped up and bonked it on the head with her flip flop and stunned it.

I grabbed a small shovel that was in a corner of the porch, pinned the snake down with the blade a few inches behind the head, and cut it in two. Yeah!! My first time to kill a snake.

The snake was a night forest adder, which is venomous, about 18" long. It must have tried to get in the house through that crack, but fortunately the crack is blocked on the inside. I'm very grateful that it didn't get inside under my door or that I didn't come upon it on my porch in the dark.

This photo was staged later that evening. I had initially thrown the dead snake into some grasses under a bush, but later realized that I hadn't taken a picture. So I got a flashlight and looked for it, but only found the body, not the head.