Well, last night at about 10PM one of our chiefs told me that they had found something. I went into the office to find this guy sitting in a bucket:
Turns out that this is an "Arabian Fat-Tailed Scorpion". Not a very nice little bugger, either. Here's a bit more information on him:
I was surprised to find all that on a pets website. Sounds like a wonderful little companion, eh. I can assure you that when I took the picture he was quite alive and not really happy about the general turn his life had taken. I'm no advocate of killing things just to kill them, but we did kill this guy rather than try to release him. We couldn't figure out a way to travel the requisite 150 miles we all decided would be a comfortable distance to have between us and him. We also found an article about an entimologist (ironically enough) that got stung by one of these one night here at Camp Beuhring. Within an hour he had lapsed into a coma. The best part is that we found him on the sidewalk outside our squadron spaces. An area I frequently transit while I'm sleeping here on alerts with nothing more substantial on my feet than flip-flops. I will say that I transited quite a bit more gingerly last night. You can't really get a good sense of scale, but that guy was about the 4" max that the website advertises.
In other news, I received my first Air Medal yesterday. To read the citation you would think that I was Chuck Norris single-handedly winning the war on terror. Not really true. Others help.
1 comment:
I'm going to girl's camp on Monday. Some of the girls who have been to camp say there are scorpions. Perhaps I'll print this picture and tell them they are lucky they'll never see that guy. This post, along with the warnings I've received, have made me remember to pack my close toed shoes and trusty flashlight!
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