Sunday, September 23, 2012

Pseudoscorpions

Cleaning the house yesterday I finally saw my first scorpion. Or so I thought.

I was sweeping the floors and rocking out to classic rock (70s music motivates me for cleaning). FYI life in the desert means endless sweeping up desert sand and dust. I had just put some debris into the dustpan and for some reason I was looking closely at the stuff in the dustpan (a white dust pan is good for that) and suddenly I saw that distinctive body shape that equals SCORPION. But the size of like a pin head. Seriously. Here is a photo of what that speck looked like in the dust pan - check out upper right dark spot.



This is what that speck looked like when I zoomed the iPhone camera in.


I mean, that looks like a scorpion, right? But can they really be THAT tiny? And in my house? To give you a better idea of the size of this speck, here is another shot I took with my camera so you could get the full effect.


Curious I did what I always do - Google search. I searched for "tiny scorpions" and quickly discovered (thank you as always Wikipedia) that what I found was not a scorpion, but is actually an arachnid. Yes, I found a spider that looks like a scorpion. It is called a Pseudoscorpion. Also known as a False Scorpion or a Book Scorpion. What? I had no idea these existed! And they are everywhere people, not just out here in the desert. You probably have them in your house and you've never seen them because they look like specs of dirt. Read the Wikipedia description - its fascinating. 

They are actually beneficial to have because they eat moth larvae, ants, book lice and dust mites. They got the name book scorpion because if you have a lot of old dusty books, that is often where you will find them. So don't be alarmed if you open up one of your old books one day and see a tiny scorpion. He's helping you.

Yesterday was an insect day. Just before I found that little guy I caught a huge black widow on the porch. Do not like. We knew we had one (or more) somewhere on the porch because we were finding webs all the time under our chairs. I am glad we caught her (all spiders are female to me because of Charlotte's Web) and released her far away from the porch. 

Later in the day we had swarms of what I believe are long-horn beetles all over the Joshua Trees in the yard. They are still around. I am writing this outside on our back porch and I can hear and see them. I think the birds are happy about it but I hope those guys move on quickly. Paul had a home invasion of those out here years ago and it wasn't pretty. 


No comments:

Post a Comment