Dealing with snakes and Scorpions

[Ulfhedinn]

My wife and my daughter are concerned about rattlesnakes and scorpions when we camp in the desert areas of SoCal. Mostly situations that involve the Pett Tent Enclosure with toilet at night and going to and from the tent in the dusk and evening?

Any tips or ideas?

 

[Mamontof]

My wife and my daughter are concerned about rattlesnakes and scorpions when we camp in the desert areas of SoCal. Mostly situations that involve the Pett Tent Enclosure with toilet at night and going to and from the tent in the dusk and evening?

Any tips or ideas?

Cook , it one of most expensive meat in the world , over $ 40 a pound
http://brentwoodtradinggroup.com/rasnmere.html

Well for kid where hi boots against scorpion / snakes watch where you go

At night simple light area and see clearly where you going

 

[Ulfhedinn]

Cook , it one of most expensive meat in the world , over $ 40 a pound
http://brentwoodtradinggroup.com/rasnmere.html

Well for kid where hi boots against scorpion / snakes watch where you go

At night simple light area and see clearly where you going

Thanks but I was thinking of more of ideas on how to calm the nerves about it and to make the latrine... safer


That link is awesome by the way! :chef:

 

[stewwalker]

I work on a ranch here in south Texas. Everyone here wears snake boots.(snake proof, not something Ted Nugent wears) There a bit pricey but they are a good piece of mind and they have saved me at least once.

http://www.chippewaboots.com/category/snake_boots

 

[Mamontof]

I work on a ranch here in south Texas. Everyone here wears snake boots.(snake proof, not something Ted Nugent wears) There a bit pricey but they are a good piece of mind and they have saved me at least once.

http://www.chippewaboots.com/category/snake_boots

Any cheaper version as night *walkers* will work the same http://www.cabelas.com/catalog/largeImagePopup.jsp?productId=749488&cImage=s7_830495_543_01

 

[Michael]

My wife and my daughter are concerned about rattlesnakes and scorpions when we camp in the desert areas of SoCal. Mostly situations that involve the Pett Tent Enclosure with toilet at night and going to and from the tent in the dusk and evening?

Any tips or ideas?

Pick up an inexpensive ultraviolet light at someplace like this. There are some examples of detecting scorpions on that website and a bunch more if you Google "scorpions uv light". They really glow in the dark when you shine a UV light on them. You can see them from 10 ft away (really!). The UV light also helps to check out the campsite area for scorpions before you settle in for the evening. No kidding .... this works

Always good to develop the habit of shaking out shoes, etc before you put them on and to carefully brush off the bottom of stuff that has been sitting on the ground. In my experience, scorpions aren't really much of a problem in the SoCal Mojave and Sonoran deserts but we do camp in their living room, eh?

 

[Ulfhedinn]

Thank you for all the great ideas!

 

[Greggk]

i know there are snake repellant contraptions available on the market. my wife and my neighbors each bought 2 (one for each front and each rear yard).. seems to work as my development i live in is new, and last summer we had found a rattlesnake "den" near the playground and everyone was encountering baby rattlers in their yards. my wife freaked out, bought them online and put them in our yard. since then us and our 2 neighbors (we live in townhomes) havent had snakes at all in the yard... everyone else has. so for us it worked..

this is the ones we got
http://www.stop-snakes.com/

 

[brngk]

My experience in AZ has been that snakes will tend to avoid you.
For scorpions, why not pack a little UV light ($4 at Ace Hardware),
with those they should be able to see any scorpions they might
encounter and call in the appropriate laser guided "D(ad)-Bomb".

 

[Honu]

Got a uv bulb kit for 3 cell mag light works way better than the small cheap ones you can see them much further out

The other thing we use around the house is this raid wasp spray with the yellow straw thing on it ? Knocks em down quicker than most any other spray
Use this when we see them and cant ********** em
The other thing works super good is fiberglass double sided indoor outdoor carpet tape they get stuck trying to cross

Only thing we did for camping was put the tape on the kids playpen legs

Just using the light for camping has worked so far but we hate scorpions get to many at our house !

 

[OnTheTrail]

The UV lights are sweet I took one down to mexico. I killed 5 of those fawkers in one night.

 

[Fireman78]

Do all scorpions glow under UV light?

 

[Michael]

Do all scorpions glow under UV light?

As far I can find, the answer is yes for all species of scorpion. There is a chemical compound in a scorpion's exoskeleton called coumarin that fluoresces under UV light. One theory is that this compound, typically found only in plants, is thought to have evolved to protect the scorpion from harmful levels of sunlight long ago.

I've given UV lights to friends going to Iraq and Afghanistan, where there are over five different species of scorpions, and they've found them to be effective in checking tents, outhouses, etc. I can personally verify that scorpions in California, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah definitely light up with a greenish glow :Wow1:

One bit of caution however -- some research indicates that very young scorpions whose new cuticle has not hardened, and those that have very recently moulted, do not fluoresce as much because of lower levels of coumarin in their new exoskeleton.