Not So Snipe Hunting

"No, I don't want to do it. Take Kitt, she'll enjoy it."

Mom said this, and I was puzzled. I mean, what does she want me to do, something super seekrit? One way to find out! I followed Eric outside the back door, and he handed me a small flashlight. He started in.

"Your mom likes to shine the light right at her feet..."

He turned on the flashlight.

"... but that doesn't work so well. We want to see where we are going, not where we are standing."

The flashlight was a black light. A few moments later, I realized what we were doing.

We were snipe hunting!

I mean, scorpion hunting!

Scorpions!

Using a tactic similar to the one I used for reducing snail populations, Eric was going out nightly, finding scorpions, and spraying them with bug spray. They die, and, hopefully, reproduce less. The hope is with a smaller outdoor population, there will be a smaller indoor population, a goal I wholeheartedly support.

The process took longer than I was expecting it to take. Eric was thorough. We walked all around the pool, checked all the trees, checked the forest, checked the orchard, checked the canal, checked the palm trees, checked the Hula haunts, checked the pool pump house, checked the fences, checked the bushes, checked the work bench, checked the house corners, checked the hens' nests. We checked the property pretty thoroughly.

We managed to find a large number of brightly glowing spots. A large number of them were dead from last night, and a large number were very much alive. Eric sprayed the latter.

The technique with the light, though. I could totally understand why Mom was focusing the light close in. It's hard not to look close where you're walking. The scorpions glow well enough that the small black light ("I'm glad I bought the $12 version, it shines twenty feet out, unlike the $8 version which doesn't throw very far," as Eric said) was good at highlighting them well.

What I also found interesting, fascinating, was the number of other things besides scorpions that glowed brightly in the black light. The scorpions glowed the brightest, but even eggshells glowed. A few times we paused at the glow, was that a scorpion, how about that, but really, only the scorpions glowed brightly.

Mom was right about my enjoying it. The whole adventure was entertaining.