Scorpion #5, 2007

Approximately 4:45 a.m. in the kitchen sink. The scorpions seem to be appearing at an alarming rate this season, but I am observing and learning things as we carry out this Catch-and-Release program. For one thing, in 3 years and all of these sightings, only one of us (well, and Callie, too, now) has been stung.* And I have yet to see one of them so much as strike out and try to sting when approached and scooped—instead, they just want to get away, and I haven't seen one get defensive and aggressive. This guy today, for example—I actually had to enlist tools just to get him into the container, and it was more than the work of but a moment, but he was the nervous, scared one of the two of us. I was pontificating aloud along these lines this morning, after I was dressed and ready to take the little guy out to the hill's edge, and Hugh said,"I think we are doing the right thing with this." I agree.

*Hugh has reminded me that he got stung, too, last year or the year before, but thinks it too must have been a wee one, as the sting was not so bad.