The “novella” edits are done and have been sent to the editor. After which I decided to take a wee nap on the couch because I felt a bit tired.
I slept for four hours. And Then I went to bed at a normal time and slept some more. The edit took a lot of braining. OMG, we worked so hard on that thing. This is what happens when you stuff a novel sized idea into half the word count. Argh.
Also, the night before that, as I was about to drift off, Gordon came into the bedroom and said he needed me for firepower and moral support. We have French doors in the living room and those doors are the main exit/entrance for the dogs and cats. We have a couple of senior dogs and in the morning and evenings, the door stays pretty much open. Pets go out and bugs come in.
As a proper Southern woman, I wanted a screen door. Well, apparently, the French doors are installed in such a way that a screen door won’t work. They open to the outside, etc. So a few weeks ago I broke down and bought a magnetic door screen. Here I will link it for you, because you will ask in the comments. As always, it’s not an affiliate link. I was hesitant about the purchase at first, because it’s not the most esthetically pleasing look to have the screen hanging in your living room, but I got so fed up with flies that I stopped caring.
Anyway, I was super happy to get the screen up. It was an easy install. Basically you attach self-adhesive Velcro around the doorframe, tack it down with provided tacks, and then fit the screen on it. I even bought one in a proper size that fit over the wide doors. The dogs and cats learned to use it quickly, the screen snaps together well, and we have less flies.
Back to the night before last. After Gordon’s ER trip, we had an exterminator spray all around the property. So it’s midnight. I follow my husband out. He has salad tongs and a bucket of water.
Me: … ?
Gordon: Look at the door.
There are strange things sticking out of the screen on the left side, where Velcro attaches to the door frame. I look closer. Six scorpions, tails curled out.
SIX.
One right above the other along the door frame.
They looked dead, probably from poison the exterminator sprayed. Somehow they crawled up and go stuck in Velcro. So I went and got a fly swatter, just in case. And then Gordon proceeded to pull dead scorpions out with tongs and toss them into the water bucket. There are still some chunks of scorpions stuck to the screen that we can’t get out.
I wish I had taken a picture of the scorpions for you, but I was focused on scorpion extermination at the time.
So, a good buy on the screen. Ten out of ten.
So I shared the scorpion adventures on Facebook and Rachel Vincent, who by the way has an interesting looking book coming out soon, commented and said, “Years ago, I found one in my bed, flung it off the covers, then got stung when I stood up. Fun night.”
Last night I woke up in the middle of the night. My pillow fell on the floor. Guess who spent good 5 minutes beating and shaking the pillow to make sure there were no scorpions in there?
I used to check the locks before bed. Now I check the screens and the window shades. And rugs in the bathroom. Just in case. #ParanoiaRUs
We have sticky floor pads outside the lab doors where I work. Many years ago a coworker carrying loaded tray of petrie dishes went to pull the door open, looked down, and saw a small rattlesnake stuck to the sticky pad. There was a loud yell accompnied by a big crash…
Whoa, am I the first?!
yes ????
Omg ???? Nooo
Wow! That’s scary. But I laughed that Gordon requested firepower and moral support.
Hopefully, this is the end of the Scorpion Saga at House Andrews.
Sending virtual moral support.
Yes and then Ilona goes to get the fly swatter! Lol.
Sounds like you already got your money’s worth from the screens. It is not paranoia, if they are really out to get you. Are we going to see scorpions in a future book now?
+1 ????
The other night I took a picture of a very large, terrifying, flying insect that my husband refused to come look at and kill for me. Then I squashed it with a plastic TUMS bottle. Then I sent the picture to my husband in both original (for scale) and cropped & blown up (for detail).
I got a lecture the next morning about how it was a male mosquito and those are so harmless they don’t even have a method to eat, their job is to breed and die.
I would do it again in a second. First, I don’t want them to do their job. Second, still large and terrifying.
And now I scan the walls before I go to bed, because what if I’m snoring and they fly in my mouth? No.
I would not handle scorpions well. And I have a similar net to my balcony to keep flies out.
OMG. I can relate. I was watering my plants the other evening and saw the largest mosquito in my life trying to get inside my house. It was giant and monstrous, like it belonged in Jurassic Park. >_< Ran back inside my house through a different door to grab my electric fly swatter. I don't care if that mosquito was harmless. It looked like it could suck all the blood out of me or my dog. Thank goodness for electric fly swatters. Works wonders on all insects except for flies. ^_^;;
Google crane fly, I bet that’s what it was. They are totally harmless but get a bad rap because they look like “honey, I blew up the mosquito”
+1
I did! I did a reverse image search and I showed him a crane fly. He said it was possible but he was pretty sure it was a male mosquito.
Ironically, had it been the size of my hand, I would have known it to be a mosquito hawk. An insect I WANT to do its job.
If it was very large, it wasn’t a mosquito. Crane fly or May fly.
Congrats on getting the edits done! ????
It’s not paranoia. I check the doors/windows, floors and ceiling before bed, on account of scorpions, wolf spiders and roaches as big as your thumb tend to make they’re way in to the house from time to time. “Homie don’t play that!”
Hurray! Novella edits are done! You deserve all the naps! I’m very glad the screen is keeping your home scorpion free. The local indoor arachnids and I have an understanding. They can share the house, but absolutely no spiders in bed.
I’ve used the attachable screens doors and found them very effective. At my last house I also had a 6ft long gopher snake in the yard. Certain paranoid friends worried about the snake going thru the screens and wanted me to keep the glass doors closed. Nope! I told them when they’re outside catching those pesky garden killing gophers like “Snakey” does they’ll get a vote. ???? ????
Congratulations on getting the edits done and gone. I feel for you. I get aphids, somehow, near my patio door. Then I will see the ladybugs around eating the aphids. I also get various bugs and spiders crawling around near my washer and dryer in my downstairs foyer. I vacuum them up since I don’t want to squash them and get their chemical scent flying in the air. So I understand the paranoia.
When we lived in Arizona my husband found a scorpion on the toilet paper roll. It was the middle of the night. After that he always checked before sitting down????.
I am really happy to live in a place where we don’t have scorpions. The nearest thing we have is tiny pseudoscorpions, about the size of my smallest fingernail including body and claws; they don’t have tails. They live under tree bark anyway and I doubt you’d ever find one in the house. While I do find most arachnids interesting, and in some cases beautiful, I have no ambition to get on any kind of personal terms with a scorpion of any species.
Congratulations on clearing your schedule for naps. May no scorpions disturb them.
While I miss Southern cooking and good shopping, I appreciate living up in Atlantic Canada and not having to live in constant fear of every insect and snake. My husband and mother-in-law love camping and don’t understand the hatred I have for it. They’ve never had to deal with nearly stepping on cottonmouths or shaking brown recluses out of sleeping bags and shoes on Girl Scout camping trips. Dear God, the sheer terror of a campground bathroom at night.
Yes, this. Twenty years in Chicago and I still shake out my shoes, every time.
LOL! Camp May Flather or Plymouth… something? There were only two in the mid-Atlantic when I was growing up (there may still be only two, for all I know), that were purported to be the best on the East Coast. We definitely had GS attendees from up and down the coast, and even some south-central.
One time I was on a GS camping trip and one of the troops had a really old tent, which apparently had holes in the floor. They came back from a hike and found a six foot diamondback inhabiting the tent. The girls slept elsewhere that night after the ranger removed the upset snake.
Scorpions set off my husband’s paranoia, so when we see one in the house, he goes on a rampage looking under furniture and getting things off the floor. He’s never been stung, but I have.
I’ve lived in the South. I understand this.
I now live in the Chicago area. Harsh winters, totally worth it. No scorpions, no tarantulas, no giant cockroaches, very few snakes (people hike here and don’t even check the other side before stepping over a log), no chiggers.
Once at our kids park day I was chatting with another parent who was also from where I grew up and we were rejoicing in the lack of chiggers. The other parents thought we were pranking them, a la a snipe hunt. This was before cell phones (wow, I’m old). We never did convince them that chiggers were a real thing.
Don’t drive south of Chicago then my friend. Chiggars are alive and well in wooded areas of Illinois. In my early 20s, while ground camping, I discovered I have an allergic reaction to their bites!
I have my yard treated every year, just in case, prednisone shots are not fun.
So sorry you had to deal with that, it’s awful. My daughter is also allergic, as we discovered on a trip to visit family.
We live on the north shore, so we have a little buffer, but if it keeps getting warmer every year I’m afraid they’ll reach us. Enjoying the chigger-free zone while it lasts, though…
Chiggers were bad when I lived in rural Missouri. In the evening, if you were out enjoying the backyard, you could feel them bite. I would need to take a shower once I got inside to get cooled off. Winters were cold enough to kill them.
We are having a snake invasion. In the garden, in the garage – so far about 6-7 sightings in the last three weeks. Fortunately all are black snakes, rat snakes or racers. Did I mention the racers climb trees? We live in The mountains of Virginia now. Years ago we lived in San Antonio, TX. My husband sprayed the foundation of our house often. We had a terrible bug problem there and a few snakes of course.
I will never forget when my mom was recovering from her appendectomy her bed was in the living room. One night she woke up to the cat bouncing in bed…. Soon enough she discovered the live mouse toy…
The scorpion story from Rachel Vincent reminds me of that
This happened once to me, but it had been raining for a solid ten days straight (oh, Boston). And the mouse was dead. We don’t know if she found it dead or killed it. As my bf at the time said, we didn’t have to worry about more mice. No mouse would invade a house with 5 cats if it had ANY other choice. And we never did see another one.
My cat STRUTTED around all day. Queen of the Mice-Killers, she knew it.
We used to get scorpions in the house as kids. One time we were having a massive sleep over and all slept on the living room floor. My dad came out to check on us and found 2 scorpions on the walls. Being the biologist that he is, he caught them, woke us all up, and it was science time. Those suckers live for almost a year in a closed mason jar. We also had a dog stung by one, who had an allergic reaction, and turned into 3 days on iv fluids and lots of meds.
When I retired and moved to a small town, I discovered that sitting in your garage, or in front of your garage was a thing. Tv’s in the garage. Dartboards. All sorts of things. And many of them have the hanging Velcro screens of which you speak. I find it weird, but practical
This reminds me of our days in Florida and the newspapers. Every morning the routine was to bash the paper on the door frame to dislodge the big, nasty bugs that crawled into the folded paper. The locals called them “water bugs”, yeah right, they were just roaches on steroids. Here’s hoping scorpion season will soon be over!
I moved to NC in 95 & had never seen a cock roach before. All of a sudden I’m seeing these monstrously Huge bugs that scared even my cat (they were at least 3 inches big) SIL says don’t worry. Those are just water bugs. Nope nope nope…they really are cock roaches. At least according to an exterminator I talked to.
Yep, and I hate them very much. Every time I move, I make sure they do not show up in any moving boxes. Yuck!
Thank you for sharing. I’ve been contemplating that screen. Am also looking for waterproof electric fans…
You finished the edits, got some sleep, and 6 scorpions didn’t make it into the house. 🙂 That’s a definite win!!
ROFLOL here. Thank you for the post, Ilona Andrews.
Paranoid behavior can be safety experience. After I threw a hissy fit last year about the live wiggling snake Titan brought inside to play with, he hasn’t brought anything live in until nest of baby birds the other week.
When someone tells you Rhodesian ridgebacks can climb up tree after lion, believe them. When someone tells you Labradors are rescue rangers, believe them.
Good job backing Gordon up. Sounds like screen door doing its job.
We just got one of those screens! We love it for our dog. So nice not to have to worry about bugs!
Check under toilet seats. I’ve found them there, too. I’m about an hour and a half west of you, so I assume out scorpion population is similar.
Now that’s a scene for nightmares…Getting your ass stung by a scorpion in the middle of the night after sitting on the toilet :O
We get fire ants from time to time in the bathroom I’ve been bitten on the butt and thighs. But there’s something worse than butt: genitalia.
Now that is the stuff of nightmares.
The checking the toilet thing came up recently when we were discussing bugs. Apparently Palmetto (?) bugs like to hang out there.
I’ve been slowly moving down the east coast as I get older, but I forget how nice it was to grow up in a part of the country that didn’t really have venomous creatures.
I’m so paranoid about snakes now, when as a kid I was running around the woods all the time without worrying where I was stepping. I have no problem with snakes in general, I just don’t want them to be able to harm me or my pets.
When I was in 8th grade I got home from school and my Mom said she had caught a strange bug in the basement. She showed me the bottle she had it in. I took one look and said “That’s a scorpion.” Mom said “We don’t have scorpions around here “ I insisted it was a scorpion. We checked in our set of encyclopedias (yes I am that old) and I was right. Mom asked how I knew what it was. I told her that I had read a Spider-Man comic book and the villain was a scorpion. From then on I always tell people read what you enjoy. You never know where you will pick up useful information.
LOL, excellent.
My brother and SIL had one of those screens on the door to their deck. It worked pretty well. I didn’t notice how it was attached, but it seemed fairly weighted in addition to be attached to the frame, so the wind wouldn’t flap it open. And I guess so it would close well after a pet went through it. Their dog had no problem going in and out when he wanted.
When I was a kid, we just cut the bottom corner of the screen door (normal screen door) so our dog could go in and out. This was in Michigan and we didn’t have problems with bugs because they’d hang out higher on the door near the light. They never discovered the cut at the bottom of the door.
Your life, as always, is an ongoing and interesting adventure. I can say with complete sincerity I am happy with my own. ????
Many years ago my parents had a second hand store in west Texas. They priced things low and had quite a few tools. One day the only customers were three young men and my mom was stocking shelves. A scorpion crawled up her leg inside her jeans, stinging about every 4” as it went. (It probably didn’t help that she was slapping at it.)
She ended up removing her jeans to get rid of it.
This happened to me with wasps. Working in a sheep shed, when three of them flew up my jeans and commenced to defend their territory. They made it up to my thigh and I was desperately clutching a fold of the jeans, trying to keep them off my skin.
Because there were three of them, this required two hands, which left me a bit shorthanded, as it were, for the purpose of getting the jeans off. Every time I thought I’d squashed one, it let me know unmistakably that it was still in the fight. The contortions I went through were most impressive to the spectators.
Once they were off, you could see a bite mark at one end and a sting at the other end for each wasp. Meanwhile my colleagues were, quite literally, rolling around on the ground laughing. The only thing that made me feel [very] slightly better about this was that the ground was mostly covered in sheep $h!t. Ah, youth! Good times.
When I was a kid, my mom would put clothes on the line to dry in the summer. I have put on jeans and been stung by wasps that weren’t shaken out. I remember that it happened, but more like it happened to someone else. I was pretty young at the time.
I didn’t nt think I’ll ever complain about dock spiders again with a clear conscience.
I grew up in the Caribbean. At the time no one had A/C. W had these ventilation blocks that were spaces always open to let air flow through. Once I got stung because a wasp was in the bed with me. I learned quickly to shake out my sheets and pillows every night before laying down.
I stopped doing it once we moved to the US. But then I went to Okinawa with my husband. All windows closed but the bug crawl up the drain pipes or a/c vent…no one told us.
I found these 3 to 4 inch long centipedes cuddled up in my sheets one night.
Now I close all drains and spray around our vents at night. Shake all sheets and pillows down too. We are in North Carolina now, its the south so I critters here too.
I traveled to Costa Rica while I was in college for a 6 week ecology course. During that time we stayed at a research center in one of the national parks. While we were eating dinner a scorpion the size of my palm fell from the ceiling and landed between two students. The instructor two seats away screamed like a toddler and leapt onto his chair. I had never seen him move so fast. Hilarious. Admittedly if I had been sitting closer I probably would have made some sort of impressive leap away as well.
That screen is worth it’s weight in gold because otherwise those nasty evils would be in your house hiding out waiting to sting you. There’s an old adage here: Everything in S. Cental Texas either stinks, stings, or sticks. So True.
Yep, we live in far North Texas, the scorpions are bad this year. We got one in the bed and I got stung. We sprayed and haven’t seen anymore. That screen is great, ours lasted a couple of years.
I stopped walking barefoot inside in the desert after stepping on one in the bathroom. Luckily I didn’t get stung but never again.
Also shake out your shoes…
Is it really paranoia if it has happened before.
I saw a youtube video the other day that if you put pennies in a clear plastic bag filled with water and hang outside the entry way, it will keep the flies away.
I always wondered if those screens actually work, good to know they do.
FYI – All you campers out there. Do you know you can make a sleeping bag liner by sewing a flat sheet top hem to bottom hem. Leave the side open 24 to 30 inches for ease of getting in and out. Much easier to wash and dry than the entire sleeping bag. Works like a charm and handy on deployments too.
Love this idea! Prefer a sheet to sleep over a sleeping bag, too. Thanks!
…I just climb into a duvet cover. (Sans duvet, of course.)
(Clarification: My duvet cover openings do not have buttons or snaps or anything else that would be uncomfortable to lie on.)
I am trying to remember the name of the author that writes kind of sci-fi paranormal investigation. And he passed away on June 28, 2020, I cannot find his name and I loved his work. Thanks.
Hi Karen,
Is it Anton Strout? https://ilona-andrews.com/2020/anton-strout-and-claw-order/
Holy smokes! Yes, best buy EVER.
Reminds me of that saying, “Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you! “
All the nopes to scorpions. I jump and flail around like a maniac when I see bees – forget scorpions, I would need to live in a bubble. So, congrats on the edited novella and creating a working barrier against those scary scorpions!
I’ll take the snow, thanks. Every time my husband and I talk about becoming snowbirds someone in the south mentions scorpions or snakes or alligators in the swimming pool… We get 250-350 inches of snow over the winter… But it’s not going to sting me or poison me or eat me.
Ok, you win… lol… I’m going to stop bitching about mosquitoes, stink bugs, horse flies and deer ticks. Every time I want to whine I’m going to say to myself , at least it’s not scorpions ????
I would be afraid a snake would come in????
I am never moving there!!!!!
#welcometotexas
Checking shoes, etc, for scorpions is the learned behavior of any true Texan. Welcome, Ilona. You’re one of us now.
Scorpions and snakes in Costa Rica – Scorpions in bath towels, in shoes, in pants legs, in closets… and snakes coming in through drain pipes and through the floor, and in produce. We had a family of coral snakes living under the house and found a Fer de Lance in a banana bunch. None of this compares to the Scorpions and snakes in TX though.
Well, that’s Texas for you. You people who live there are made of sterner stuff.
It’s not paranoia if they are out to get you. Just sayin.
I woke up with one on my face, and we got used to doing a bed check, shaking out all of our clothes, shoes, etc.. in California. Between those, the tarantulas, earthquakes, and the darn allergies, I noped right out of there as soon as I could. California was NOT a pleasant place for me. I’m highly allergic to eucalyptus. Guess what surrounded our house?
I moved to NC from NY a couple of years ago. The first time I saw a cockroach I freaked. Had the exterminators coming the next day. Then friends told me “that’s a palmetto bug, not a roach“.
Took me two weeks to figure out they were lying and just wanted me to stop freaking out.
Exterminators come out regularly!