A bit too much wildlife for my tastes.

I've been down with what I think was garden variety flu (as opposed to H1N1) since Saturday. Now, usually, my Scottish housekeeper, Sarah, changes my bed linens every Friday. However, because they had been soaked nightly in sweat until my fewer finally broke last night, I asked her to change them this morning.

When she started to change them, I was in my power chair, sitting over in the corner of the bedroom, sipping on my mornign glass of Spicy Hot V-8 juice and telling her about something-or-other when she let out this blood curdling scream and jumped back from the bed.  She was staring intently at the pillow and saying "Oh, God what is that? " Cojack immediately went on full alert. The way she was acting, my first thought was that it was a big spider - she hates spiders. However, when she gingerly flipped up the pillow, to my utter amazement, it was a scorpion! Cojack immediately lunged for it. Fortunately, I was able to grab his collar in mid lunge or he surely would have been stung. The thing was only about two inches long, but it was in classic scorpion defensive posture with tail arched and stinger cocked and ready.

 I told Sarah to hand me a shoe. I meant one of mine, but she quickly took off one of her Reboks and handed it to me. Several whacks got him onto the carpet where I finally convinced Sarah to rub him out with the shoe she still had on. 

That was my first - and hopefully last - scorpion encounter in this part of the country. Has anyone else encountered scorpions around here?