Monday, November 30, 2020

Scorpion Hunting

Today, we have another guest blogger. This post was written by Ivory:

"For biology I had to do a bug collection. My teacher had mentioned how spiders are only extra credit because they're arachnids and she also said that scorpions would only be extra credit as well. That was when I made up my mind to go scorpion hunting, with no idea if it would work or not. After class I asked my teacher how to find scorpions and she said that they glow in UV light. Supposedly star gazers that were in an area with scorpions would shine their light on the ground first to make sure there were no scorpions. 

I didn't really know if any of it was true but I told Dad that I wanted to go. We got it set up and decided to take Pearl along even though it was going to be a late night. I did some research on how to catch them, which by the way, isn't a thing that people do, and I also researched where to find them in Utah. Apparently down in Saint George seemed to be a good idea so that's where we were headed.

Halfway through the drive we got pretty hungry so we stopped at Sizzler's for dinner. It was super yummy and Pearl really liked the steak too.





Scorpions are usually out at dusk and fortunately enough, we finished dinner with almost perfect timing to arrive at dusk and find the scorpions. When we did arrive we bundled up, grabbed our UV flashlights and we were off. It took a little while to find one but in the end we found three. They do, in fact, glow in the UV light—a bright green. One got a little mutilated while we were trying to catch it. The other two were fine though, and we even caught a little baby one. And no one got hurt while we were catching.



After catching three we sat down to star gaze. Just as we were getting up to head home, something big landed in the bushes next to us. Dad thought it was a bat but I knew what it was cause I had heard the buzzing before hand. It was a bug. A big bug. Also a nice bug. It walked right into our jar. 


We stopped at a gas station before going home. I saw a Palm Tree and was super excited (and maybe a little tired.) I asked if I could go touch it. Dad said yes and even better, we got a hug. 


I wanted to stay up on the ride home to talk to Dad and make sure he didn't fall asleep so I kept asking for Mountain Dew and in the end, even Pearl joined my case. He never gave in though and we both ended up falling asleep.


It was a very successful trip with good food and good memories and cool bugs. I might even want to go again sometime. I guess Daisy will need a bug collection in a couple years..."

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