Creepy Crawlies

I thought you may be interested in some of the critters we see in Mexico. Today, I have two kinds of bugs that you don't see every day and usually have to go exploring to find them.

On our way down our route from Mazatlan to LDM (short for Lo de Marcos), we stopped to fill up with propane at the propane depot a few klicks south of Las Varas, and about twenty minutes north of LDM. While filling the rig's tank we noticed this GIANT black beetle.

Wow! It is big. Crawling on a curb.

Yes, it is alive! About 3-4" long.

It seems they are attracted by the lights at night and stick around during the day. They are quite slow and cumbersome. I wonder how well they fly. There were some smaller versions of these, about 3/4" long, but looked much the same.

And now for the fun part....

Mexico is home to several species of scorpions, which normally are not a big problem to us. There are some deadly species and about 1000 people in Mexico die each year. Usually these are the very young or the elderly. When they do sting, the sting packs a big wallop, depending on the species. Our friend Eric just got stung a couple of days ago, on his finger after picking up a towel off a drying rack. It hurt something fierce.

I had bought a small LED blacklight off eBay (5 bucks!) in September and offered to come and hunt for the critters after dinner last night. Using the blacklight, the scorpions glow a bright fluorescent green and are easy to find in the dark.

Scorpion glowing in the dark under the glow of the blacklight.

Using my needle-nose pliers. I could pick them out of the undergrowth and easily pinch their heads to kill them. These were anywhere from 2.5" to about 0.5" in length...nothing too big. In about a half hour, I had nabbed 12 of the critters and one had escaped to claws of death by slinking away under a rock. The picture below is what was left of the twelve creepie crawlies.

There are two species here. The tan coloured ones with the dark bars across the body are "bark" scorpions. They are the ones with the biggest ouch around here. The "bark" scorpion is what stung Eric.

Close-up of the business end of the scorpion.

Thankfully, all these critters were from another campground where Eric is staying. There were a few people very happy to see me with all the dead scorpions and thanked me for checking around their rigs. I didn't find any close to people's rigs. All theses were from a small hillside along the south side of the campground.

We found only a single scorpion in our campground and will go out somewhat regularly to hunt for more stragglers and new arrivals.

If you are interested in buying one of these lights, they are available on eBay, and are shipped direct from Hong Kong. I paid US$4.99, including shipping. eBay 12 LED Blacklight. If the link no longer works, you can do a search on eBay. The vendor is/was cwtco. Shipping took only a couple of weeks.