Scorpions and water heaters

Living in Arizona has a lot of wonderful things going for it. The nice winter weather, the palm trees, the way the streets are all on a grid system and make it so easy to get around and even how pretty it is (in a desert'y' kind of way). Let me just be the first to admit though that we have a few negative things going for us too, like hot summers, all bland tan stucco houses and of coarse SCORPIONS.

About two weeks ago our dog had an encounter with one of these scorpions. Weston loves to play with bugs, I think it is a gross dog thing. We always catch him chasing mosquitoes, flies and even spiders. He often tries to catch them in his mouth, it's like a game to him. Steve and I always figured Weston may eventually have a run in with a scorpion seeing that we live in orange groves which is where they apparently like to hang out. What we didn't know is what to do if he did.

Around 9:30 at night Steve went outside to take the trash from the back yard to the street and Weston was playing around the trash area. Steve noticed that Weston looked like he was trying to play with some type of bug but didn't know what kind so he went to the front to drop of the trash can. He came back to find Weston sneezing like crazy and kind of having some sort of breathing attack. Sure enough Steve looked around him and saw a scorpion right next to him. That scorpion was quickly smooshed and I thought my dog was going to die! (I overreact sometimes:)

We think Weston was stung on the nose and mouth area, maybe even inside his mouth because he just would not stop sneezing. We tried to look at the area where we thought he was stung and he wouldn't let us near it. Right after it happened we immediately looked online for some advice. Every website we saw suggested taking him to the vet so we looked up emergency animal hospitals that where open that late. We called one place and the lady told us that we did NOT have to bring him in unless he was experiencing hives, or swelling or throwing up. She told us to just keep an eye on him for a couple of hours and try to get him to relax.

After the call it made me feel better because I knew that Weston would most likely be okay. We laid him down on the bed and just petted him a lot and eventually he just relaxed and was not sneezing or breathing funny anymore. He slept pretty much through the night and the next day he was back to his normal, goofy self!

The reason I tell this story is because it made us realize we really should be checking our house and yard for scorpions every week. We have found a few since we bought the house but nothing to abnormal. Yesterday I bought a scorpion flashlight which is basically a black light. They spot scorpions because when you shine a black light on one it glows. So last night we put the scorpion flash light to work looking all over our house and yard. I am pleased to announce that we did not fin any scorpions inside our house. But... We did find OVER 20 SCORPIONS outside in our back yard!!! A little more than I thought.

Even though we found a lot we managed to kill all of them and realized they where all mostly on the back wall fence. None of them where in the actual grass area which is nice. Below are a couple pictures of the scorpions we found last night... Enjoy!

After we mass murdered all the scorpions in our back yard Steve went to work fixing our water heater which was disgusting, and probably originally purchased in the ice ages. It started leaking the other night and had this weird, gross build up of some kind lining the top of it. I posted a picture of that below so you know what I mean. I am soooooo glad I have a husband willing to take on the challenge of replacing the old water heater. We bought a new one yesterday and Steve is working on installing it as I speak! Hopefully by the time I get home from work today I will have a new working water heater!

Steve getting ready to rip out the old water heater.

The gross water heater... Yuck.

Ciao!