Never walk barefoot.

Never. Ever. Especially not outside with 689 billion fire ants, and not even in the house.

It's barely 9:00 in the morning...... I've been out walking with my two friends down the road, the cats have been fed and the plants and flowers have been watered. And I've killed the first scorpion of the day. 

In my dressing room, no less.  Right there in the middle of the carpet, plain as day.... stretched out as if were getting a sun-tan.  No screams from me.... my husband didn't even know what was happening.  I just ran downstairs and got the dust-buster thing and used that to get that blasted scorpion out of there.  My, how I have progressed out here in the hills.

When we first moved out here, I could barely look at those things.  My husband insisted that I take a good look, so I would know how to recognize one. As if I'd be wanting to get that close and personal with a scorpion?  "You've got to know what you're dealing with out here," he told me.  (The wrath of the Texas heavens....... that's what I'm dealing with out here.)

You quickly learn, if you're a city girl, not to walk barefoot in your own house.  I don't care if you have carpets or wood floors or tile....... the scorpions and spiders don't care, and they will travel across all of the above, and then some.  Had I walked into my dressing room this morning without slippers, I could have easily stepped on that blessed thing.  The scorpions always seem to be right in your path, not off in a corner of the room.

No matter what room I'm in, my eyes are looking down at the floor and up at the ceiling.  Scorpions are like spiders.... they seem to be able to crawl anywhere at all.... and before my husband put mesh screens into the air-conditioning vents, we actually saw scorpions crawling out of them.  Give me a blessed break....

We've been in this house over four years now. I used to look under the bed at night before I got into it.... scorpions like hiding under things.  I don't do that anymore since we've been using that lethal-weapon strength insect spray, but I do look at the ceilings and walls before I turn out the light. One can never be too careful. 

Still..... a scorpion in the dressing room.... which is right next to our bedroom.  No matter that he was facing away from our bedroom when I saw him..... that only means he had been in our bedroom before making his way into the dressing room. Right this very second as I type, the scorpion is trapped in the dust-buster.  One of our neighbors uses duct-tape on a broom handle to capture scorpions. I tried that.... but it's too disgusting trying to get the duct-tape off of the end of the broom.

The wrath of the Texas heavens, I'm telling you.