Our little wild kingdom.

I've already said I'm not a pet person. Not an animal person period. There's a story about Saint Francis of Assisi saving some children from a wild dog and talking to it, calling it "Brother Dog," or some such craziness.

Two nights ago, I walked out of my bathroom into my bedroom and discovered "brother scorpion" crawling across my carpet. Instead of squashing him, I monitored him while Kevin got a jar. I decided I wanted to research what type of scorpion we're dealing with.

Well, brother scorpion sat in his lonely jar all the next day on top of my refrigerator, no doubt plotting against me and all my offspring. But I never got time to go online and determine his breed or level of lethalness.

SO... last night Kevin figured out we had an Arizona bark scorpion, the most poisonous of all, and then we went to sleep. This morning he said goodbye and I asked him to take the jar and its resident to work with him and "take care" of things. Moments later he came running up the stairs and said, "The cage broke - I need your help!"

I was picturing broken glass and a vengeful scorpion on the loose, but when I reached the downstairs it turned out the mouse cage had fallen off the washing machine (where it resides at night so we don't hear "Sister Mice" sprinting in their wheel for hours on end while we try to sleep). Emma, Annabelle, Measles and Alice were free! It took WAY longer than it should have to corral them all back into their cage. Kevin got bit a couple more times, and there was quite a mess on the laundry room floor, but all was well and Kevin left with the jar and the scorpion with time to spare.

R.I.P., scorpion number 15.

In one week, more live creatures arrive at my house. We'll be nurturing some caterpillars until they become butterflies and move out into the big hot Vegas summer sunshine. Unless they make friends with the mice. And scorpions. Then we could all just live together as one big happy family.