Haha, scorpions. Reminds me of another story.
An ol' rancher friend of mine, German, born and raised out here since the early '30s. Same birthday as Donna Douglas (Elly May Clampett of Beverly Hillbillies). Now, HE had a lotta stories, but you had to hear them in his Germanic broken English. Graduated at 5th grade to help work the ranch, so you had to give him some leeway to get the stories out.
Seems that he was having trouble with certain insects gettin' into his ranchhouse. "Danged centipedes!" he would holler. He hated them things. Talked about them being deadly, crawling around his place at night, getting his family all wound up.
Now, I remember catching a large 7" long, 1" diameter millipede in Arizona, back around 1962. Some folks called those centipedes, and claimed those were poisonous. But for me, a kid, it was a pet. And, we don't have big millipedes like that over here.
Ours are the little 1" long millipedes.
No problem with those.
Maybe I better start watching out for these centipedes, but still not quite sure what he's talking about.
Some time later, we're sitting out behind his place, watching the deer. I see a scorpion scrambling across in front of us, and get up to stomp it.
"PASS AUF!!! (watch out!). Tha's one of them centipedes, and it'll kill you!!!"
"Naw, that's just a scorpion."
Mild argument follows. Long story short, seems that for the last 70+ years, his broken-English upbringing has been calling them centipedes. I had to buy him a book on insects to get this straightened out...