Bats, snakes, and scorpions! Those three animals are objects of fear, bordering on the phobic, for the vast majority of the residents residing in the small town that I live in, Churintzio, Michoacan located in Western Central Mexico. While the apprehension regarding the bats is unjustified, the concern, though not to a phobic degree, in regards to snakes, if venomous, and scorpions is not. Of the two, scorpions should be of the greatest concern.

Worldwide, on average, there are an estimated 1.2 million scorpion stings to humans annually which result in 3250 deaths; of the close to 1500 species of scorpions in the world, about 50 due to the lethality of their venom, are potentially deadly to humans. Perhaps contrary to common conceptions, for every person killed by a venomous snake, ten are killed by scorpions. While in the U.S. only 4 people died from scorpion stings in an eleven year period, approximately 1000 per year in Mexico died as a result of scorpion stings during that same time frame. Mexico is home to many dozens of species of normally non-deadly to humans scorpions and a few kinds of potentially deadly scorpions, the most lethal one being the Arizona bark scorpion which is the world’s fifth deadliest scorpion and North America’s most deadly.

Scorpions are not insects, rather they are venomous anthropods that belong to the class of predatory nocturnal arachnids; they are closely related to spiders, ticks, and horseshoe crabs. Except for Antarctica, they occur in all continents with their greatest prevalence being in the subtropics of the Northern Hemisphere. Varying in size from ½ inch up to 7 inches, their flat, elongated body is composed of four pairs of legs, a pair of claws, and a jointed/segmented tail that has a venomous spike at its end. These primarily solitary animals only at night lie in wait for their prey which is usually insects but sometimes may include spiders, millipedes, and centipedes. When ready to attack, the scorpion arches its tail over its back and with its stinger which contains two poison-filled glands that can voluntarily regulate the amount of venom to be injected, plunges it forward to sting its victim.

If it were up to the scorpions they would never have any interaction or contact with humans. So, why do so many humans get stung by them? The majority of these stings in Mexico occur at home during the rainy season. You see, for most months of the year scorpions are out of sight, hidden and hunkering down in crevices and cracks in the exterior walls of houses. When the rains come, they are driven to dry areas. Then, once in the house proper they seek out good hiding areas like boxes, bags, sacks, luggage and items that also may be on the floor like shoes, clothing, mats, hampers, baskets, towels, blankets, pillows, and newspapers; When a human, without seeing them, reaches into or steps into where they are hiding, the result oftentimes is a sting, typically to the hand or foot.

The effects of scorpion stings on humans are exceedingly variable. Depending on the species of scorpion, they possess one of two kinds of poison. Most scorpion stings to humans produce, similar to a bee or wasp sting, a sharp pain followed by numbness and localized swelling that may last anywhere from an hour or two to a couple of days; these stings are not fatal unless a person has a severe allergic reaction to it. On the other hand, the poison of a small percentage of scorpions like the Arizona bark scorpion may be lethal. Their poison is neuro-toxic, similar to the venom of coral snakes and cobras. From what I understand, the “lethal” scorpions are not indigenous to the region of Mexico that I live in but can be transported from their points of origin like Northwestern Mexico hidden in packages or cargo, often leather, to such places like the shoe making capital of Mexico, Leon, Guanajuato and then, unknowingly, be shipped/transported elsewhere.

In the close to five years that we have lived in Churintzio, I have seen in our house approximately twenty scorpions, ranging in size from ½' to 1" while my wife, Maria, may have seen two and a half times as many. My rule of hand and foot is that if you see them in the open (all the ones that I have “experienced” have been lying motionless in the open, typically in the corner of a room), just get a shoe and squash them to death; never have I seen one outside of my house. I have been fortunate never to have been surprised by one by “discovering” and disturbing it while it was in hiding. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Maria.

Once, when Maria went to pick up a towel from the floor she was stung through the towel by a 1" scorpion before she even saw it. She said that the scorpion injected its venom into the tendon of her right hand and she then first experienced an extremely sharp pain which was then followed by the typical symptoms of numbness and the swelling of the hand- after washing the area with soap and water, Maria self-medicated by performing Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) on herself, the symptoms abated in 24 hours. Instead, I would have just followed the suggested protocol by washing the area and then putting an ice compress on the wound. However, when a neighbor's little boy was stung and exhibited the same symptoms as Maria had, the boy’s mother used a local remedy of applying chlorine to the wound which is decidedly not the recommended course of action!

However, the husband of Maria’s godmother was not as “lucky” as Maria. While out in the field where his cattle graze, he was building a wooden fence. He was stung on the hand by a scorpion that was residing unseen in a crack in a post. Apparently it was the same kind that had stung Maria but he had a severe allergic reaction to it as he soon had blurred vision, extreme pain going all the way up his arm, and was having difficulty breathing as his throat was blocked. Fortunately, he had an employee of his immediately drive him into town to get treatment from a doctor experienced in treating scorpion stings. The doctor injected him with anti-venom medication. If he had not quickly received that injection, he in all probability would have died.

In addition to those individuals that are allergic to scorpion stings, those that are at most risk are infants and children (due largely to low body weight), the elderly, the infirm, and pets. In Mexico, the highest fatality rates occur in rural areas as a result of the lack of local medical facilities and the time and distance involved to receive proper care. Even though our town has the proper care and facilities available, Maria and myself now have on hand, just in case of an emergency, a liquid form of anti-venom medicine that is taken orally that is effective for both scorpion stings and venomous snake bites.

I really wish that the local residents would stop indiscriminately beheading with machetes every snake that they come across, whether venomous or not. Moreover, I do not understand why they reflexively kill, normally with slingshots like my father-in-law used to, harmful-to-only-insects, bats? As for the scorpions, although they never purposefully seek out humans and do significantly reduce the insect and spider population, killing them oftentimes is certainly proactive and justifiable arachnidcide!