Sometimes during my summers off when I was a teacher (eighth-grade English and US history), I made extra money working as a laborer on a friend's blueberry farm in western Washington, near the base of Mt. St. Helens. One summer I was tasked with building a five-hundred-foot-long rock wall along my friend's gravel driveway, using rocks from a creek that ran through his property. As the rock wall would require hundreds of rocks, each weighing between ten and thirty pounds, my friend insisted that I use his big John Deere tractor to transport the rocks from creek to driveway, a distance of perhaps three hundred feet.
One day while selecting rocks from the creek, I noticed what appeared to be a rather large, brown, ugly bug of some sort hiding beneath one. Curious, I rolled the rock over slowly to expose the bug, at which point the bug reared and struck a menacing pose with … a curved tail and two extended claws.
What the hell? I thought, instinctively drawing back. Is that … is that … a scor … a scorpion? Hiding under a rock … in a creek … in western Washington? I thought scorpions were desert creatures, like in Arizona and New Mexico?
The creature, nonplussed by my gaping mouth and stupid expression, maintained its stance, doing its best to scare me off and leave it alone. But because I couldn't believe my own eyes, I knew no one else would believe my story, so I had to devise a plan to present them with some kind of … evidence. But how? No way was this little monster going to let me pick it up, put it in my pocket, put a leash on it, and take it home to show all my friends.
So I did the only thing I could think of to do: I ran back up to the house (the tractor would've taken too long), went inside, found an empty Mason jar with a lid, and ran back down to the creek. If I can just get the little critter to let down its guard for a minute, I thought, I can maybe coax it into the jar, quickly put the lid on, and take it back up to the house to wait until I'm ready to head home. Easy as pie, right?
But as anyone who's ever made a pie will tell you, it ain't at all easy. And neither was this. The scorpion had an impressive assortment of evasive maneuvers, performed while alternately lunging toward me and scooting backward—sometimes doing both at once, it seemed, although I knew this was rationally impossible. For a while it seemed like I was going to be outmaneuvered and outwitted by this prehistoric, two-inch-long bug with the attitude and stealth of an eight-ton T. Rex.
However, I finally managed to figure out the scorpion's game, waited for it to make a wrong move, and quickly scooped it up into the jar, along with a little creek water to make it feel at home.*
When my friend, Martin, returned to the farm that afternoon and I showed him the scorpion in the jar, he was just as incredulous as I was. He had not only never seen one, but he never knew they could exist up there. I asked him what he thought we should do with it, and he suggested that he take it to the local Extension Service office the next day and see what they had to say.
A few days later I called Martin to ask what the Extension folks had told him. He said they had heard of a species of scorpion that lived in certain areas of the Western U.S., but they had never seen one—and hadn't personally heard of anyone else who had. Later I learned that the species is called a Pacific (or western) forest scorpion, and that they inhabit mostly forested areas in the Cascade foothills (including, specifically, the "south side of Mt. St. Helens"), living under rocks and logs. I also learned that I was needlessly concerned about being stung: their venom isn't lethal, and it only hurts about as much as being stung by a bee or wasp. They are also shy, nocturnal, and "rarely seen."
So rarely that in my nearly seven decades of hiking, fishing, and traipsing around in forests of the Pacific Northwest, I have seen only that one. Maybe I need to build another long rock wall?
 |
| Western forest scorpion (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uroctonus_mordax) |
*Note: Looking back on all this now, I vehemently disapprove of my actions. I should've left the poor scorpion alone, or maybe tried to find a camera at the house instead of a jar. But I was young and dumb, and frankly, the shock of finding a live scorpion in that creek, at the base of Mt. St. Helens, overwhelmed any sense of compassion or wisdom I otherwise might've mustered.
