Summerlin bug/pest control by Bulwark Exterminating

So this was totally unexpected phone call yesterday.  It was during the AM rush hour.  My phone rings.  The next thing I hear is “Help there is a Scorpion on my dashboard!” WOW.  That was unexpected.

This guy calls me on his way to work in Phoenix and tells me that he has scorpion crawling across his dashboard.  He wants to know what to do, if he should pull over, is it going to sting him…  “How do I get rid of the scorpion!”

Well, the first thing you need to do is not aggravate the scorpion.  Yelling probably doesn’t help sense they are highly sensitive to vibrations, although if you are driving they extra noise won’t make much difference.  So here are the tougher questions…

How did the scorpion get into my car?

Probably climbed up the tire, down the axle, up the engine and into the ventilation system since that is going to have some nice moisture to drink.  Keep in mind that any crack the with of a credit card is a nice open door for a scorpion. Besides if a kitten can climb up a tire and get stuck in a car vent then a scorpion most certainly can… really happened, we had a kitten get stuck in our VW van’s vent when I was a kid… Don’t worry, we saved him.

So back to the scorpion… tire, or fell on to the hood, followed moisture, went into your vent, came out of vent inside of your car and on the dashboard.

How do I get rid of this Scorpion in my car?

Well, I wouldn’t advise spraying your car with pestisides, unless you were seeing a lot of scorpions in your car, but even then I think you should probably spray your garage first and see if that solves the problem.  And you don’t want to use powders on your dashboard, because who knows where they would end up.

My advice is to kill it with your shoe (boots work better then high heels).

Actually the best tip I can give you is to set some sticky traps in your car.  Put some down by your feet at night and up on the dashboard.  Wedge it against the corner of the window and the dash.  Scorpions like to walk along walls since they are pretty much blind.

Ideally you should have your home and garage sprayed regularly to keep the local scorpion population down.

I have been getting many questions lately regarding how the scorpions actually get inside the home. During the summer when it is hot outside people tend to crank up the AC. When the hot air from the outside meets the cold air on the inside it creates condensation inside the walls. Similar to what happens to your car windows on a cold morning. When a home is built it has to have ways for the moisture to escape. So homes are built with little openings in the foundation. If you live in a brick or stone home you have what’s called weep holes. Weep holes are little spaces between the brick that look like it’s missing the mortar. If you live in a stucco home you have what’s called a J Rail. By using a mirror and looking under the over hang around the foundation you will see little holes every 3-6 inches big enough for the scorpions to get in. When the scorpions get close to our walls they can feel the cool air coming out of the holes and it draws them inside.

As a Scorpion specialist one of the most common questions that I am asked is How are the scorpions getting into my home in the first place? Or I found a Scorpion in my kids room up stairs how did it get there? Well even though it might not be pleasant to think about the facts are, Scorpions get into our home through openings that are only 1/16^th of an inch. Once inside the walls of the house they use the electrical wiring to move through out the voids of the walls, kind of like there own little high way. Because the wiring runs throughout the entire home they can follow it into any room of the home and find any crack the size of a credit card to get out. Most common places are around the outlet covers, vents in the ceiling, where the pipes come out of the wall under the sink or even in the shower or bathtub, and in some cases they will come out by ceiling lights.