Sorry to hear about your child getting stung. New developments can often drive the scorpions inside, since it was their home to begin with. An important thing is to be sure windows and doors are tightly weatherstripped, and to manage the outside area near the house. Scorpions are pretty tough, even for pest control companies. I have attached a publication from the U of A Extension office. It has a section on controlling scorpions.

Here is a link that might be useful: Scorpions

Oh! My! So glad your little one will be okay! I've never dealt with Scorpions :( Hopefully you'll get some good advice here ;)

First sign up for a regular pest control program. Although Jim is correct that they are tough little buggers, the purpose of the pest control is not to eliminate the scorpions but to eliminate their food source. My neighbor who has had scorpions for years recently started a regular pest control program and in three months they have been all but disappeared.

I would also remove or elevate any flowerpots near the house and eliminate any other places where they might hide. The article that Jim attached does a good job of describing their habitat.

I have another neighbor who said putting screen around all the vent stacks on the roof helped. I guess it would depend on whether scorpions could navigate through water. To the get into the living space they would have to pass through a sink trap, which is filled with water.

I think the most important step is to, as Jim said, try to make you house as tight as possible. Recently I was painting the overhang on my house and spotted a scorpion on rafter. When sprayed it ran into the attic. What I noticed was the edge of the rafter had been broken off where it goes through the wall thus providing access from the outside to the attic. We had one in our kitchen light, which had to come from the attic, as the light is recessed. So check around any fixtures that are hung from the ceiling to make sure there are no gaps where they could go from the attic to fixture to the living space. You could also get a black light and see if you can determine where theyÂre coming from and try to eliminate them at the source. Good luck and take care, Bill

Yeah, keeping scorpions out of your house is a never-ending battle but with regular pest spraying you can do a pretty good job. They can get in cracks as thin as a credit card-all houses, especially older ones have cracks this size somewhere. The new spray they use is not harmfull to pets or kids so don't hesitate in using it. In addition most mortgage companies will require you to spray for termites on a regular basis and you can have them spray for termites at the same time. Disturbing the ground like they do with new construction brings out all sorts of bugs, but once construction finishes up the termite problem lessens but will unfortunatly never go away. I have a neighbor down the street that told me when he was growing up in Phoenix back in the 30's they would put the legs of a baby's bed in bowls of water to keep scorpions from crawling in the bed. If the house had a really bad problem they would lay a piece of glass on top of the bed to keep the buggers from dropping from the ceiling...add that with no AC back then and you might ask yourself why anyone wanted to live here.

Cats are immune to their venom, so if you get a young female who is very playful, you might have a watch-cat.

Good luck!

Pagan has the best scorpion control idea... get a cat! I don't know if they are immune or not, but cats are the best thing for scorpion control!

Another idea for partial control - introduce some Mediterranean geckos to your yard. They aren't native, but are well established in the Phoenix area, and they do help to control scorpions (and lots of other bugs, as well). They'll happily live outside under any sort of shelter that they can find. They only appear at night, which is also when the scorpions come out.

The best source for these would be some friend who has them already living in their yard. I don't know of any place that sells them commercially.

Very happy to hear your baby is okay. I'd like to say ditto on the cat suggestion. I've had two encounters with scorps unrealized by me at the moment until I checked out what the cats were on the hunt about.

First thing I would do is put the feet of the cribs in jars or plastic bottles. Bark Scorpions are excellent climbers but can't climb straight up glass or smooth plastic. People used to hang plywood over the cribs that was larger then the cribs. That way, if a Scorpion fell from the ceiling, it landed on the plywood. If it ran off the edge of the plywood, it would hit the floor and not the crib. Go to Home Depot and ask about a fluorescent black light for Scorpions. They will know what you want. It's basically a 12" battery operated closet light. You buy that and a black light fluorescent bulb to fit it. The incandescent bulbs don't work (the ones that screw into a regular fixture). Scorpions will glow very brightly under the black light and be easy to spot. Sweep the babies rooms every night. They generally won't move until you touch them, so they are easy to catch. They are fairly quick once touched, so plan carefully. I use tongs.

You can drop them in vinegar to kill them. Have your home sealed, or do it yourself. You'll see ads in the local papers for Scorpion control. Especially check around the pipes under your sinks and seal those openings in the drywall. Read the article from U of A that was previously posted. In addition to removing their habitat outside, the house sealing helps a lot.

Scorpions haven't been studied all that much relative to other insects, so there is a lot of misinformation about them. I've read every book and article I could find. Bifenthrin is the most effective pesticide that I have found for Scorpions. It will kill them, altough you'll hear people say that nothing can. It is also safer for people and mammals then many others. Talstar (a brand of insecticide) is expensive, but I highly recommend it. You can order it online or ask your pest control person to get it. You used to not be able to find Bifenthrin in the stores, but now I see Ortho is using it in their granules (not liquid though) for Fire Ants.

I would water in the granules in a ring around your home and around your property. I would also spray your tree trunks, although no pesticide company I've talked with even knows this. Bark Scorpions live in trees. They love palms and pines. Make sure you cut back any trees that overhang your roof. I didn't completely stop seeing them until I began spraying the tree trunks.

My property was infested with them when I bought it. On one collection hunt, my son and I picked up 147 of them! That's what drove my self-taught doctorate in Scorpion eradication. I know see about 1 per year.

They are fascinating creatures and lots of people keep them as pets. I'm fine with them in the wild, and even avoid stepping on them. In my house though, I view them as any other intruder.