Scorpions
Scorpions at Home: What Attracts Them and How to Prevent Them
A scorpion is not looking for your house: it is looking for dark, cool shelter with insects to eat. That your house meets those conditions is coincidence, not bad luck. In Costa Rica reports concentrate with the first rains, when saturated ground displaces everything that lived under stones and leaf litter. Prevention is mostly structural and behavioural, and there is a three-second routine that prevents most stings.
- They come in for shelter and food: where there are cockroaches and crickets, there are scorpions.
- Reports rise with the first heavy rains, as water displaces them from the ground.
- They hide in whatever is on the floor and whatever has not been moved for days.
- Shaking out shoes and clothing before use prevents most stings.
- After a sting: wash, apply cold and seek medical advice; for small children and older adults, immediately.
Why they came to your house
A scorpion comes in for three reasons, in this order:
- Food. It eats insects. A house with cockroaches, crickets or spiders is a house with a larder. This is the key point and the most ignored: controlling cockroaches reduces scorpions.
- Shelter. It wants dark, tight and cool. A crack will do, or the space under a woodpile, a cardboard box on the garage floor, or a shoe.
- Displacement. Heavy rain saturates the ground and drives them out. Nearby building work or earthmoving does the same.
So if several appeared in a short time, ask what changed. It is almost always rain or work nearby.
The eight hiding places in a house
- Shoes left on the floor, especially boots and trainers not worn daily.
- Clothing on the floor or hanging against the wall.
- Behind pictures and mirrors, and between curtain and wall.
- Under the bed, particularly where boxes are stored.
- Woodpiles, building materials or plant pots stacked against the outside wall.
- Cardboard boxes on the garage or store-room floor.
- Under the sink and behind the toilet, where there is damp and insects.
- The ceiling void, where they travel and from which they occasionally drop.
The pattern is clear: whatever is on the floor, and whatever has not moved in days.
The three-second routine
This part is not pest prevention: it is sting prevention. And it is where most is gained.
- Shake out your shoes before putting them on. Always, not only when you suspect something. Most foot stings happen this way.
- Shake out clothing that has been folded or hanging for several days.
- Check the bed before getting in if there has been recent activity: pull the sheet back in one go.
- Do not reach blindly into boxes, woodpiles or under furniture. Use a torch.
- Move the bed away from the wall and keep the bedding from touching the floor.
Structural prevention
- Seal. This is the underlying fix: door bottoms, pipe penetrations, vents, cracks. See how to seal the house.
- Control their food. If you have cockroaches, deal with them: prevention in kitchen and bathroom.
- Clear the outside perimeter. Remove firewood, rubble, pots and leaf litter from against the wall. Keep a clear strip of at least half a metre.
- Cut the grass next to the house and keep shrubs from touching wall or roof.
- Get things off the floor in garage and store room: use shelves, not stacked boxes.
- Check with UV light. Scorpions fluoresce under ultraviolet: a UV torch at night is the fastest way to know whether you have them and where.
If somebody is stung
Without alarm and without playing it down:
- Wash the area with soap and water.
- Apply cold — ice wrapped in a cloth — for pain and swelling.
- Do not cut, do not suck, do not apply a tourniquet. It does not help and it makes things worse.
- Seek medical advice. In most cases the picture is intense local pain, but medical assessment is always the right call.
- Seek help immediately for a small child, an older adult, someone with an underlying condition, or if there are symptoms beyond local pain: sweating, vomiting, difficulty breathing, agitation.
- If you can, keep the specimen — in a jar, without handling it — so it can be identified.
It costs little and changes the diagnosis. Walk the house and the perimeter at night with an ultraviolet light: scorpions glow greenish and are visible from metres away. In a single pass you learn whether you have a stray individual or a population, and where they are getting in.
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