This post is part a new paranoia that has entered my life, and part recap of a hill country getaway weekend with the husband. First up, hill country.

If you drive about an hour and a half southwest of Austin, the liberal bubble of hipsters and hippies that I call home suddenly transforms into something a lot more Texas.

Sure, the foliage and landscape changes pretty dramatically into less soil and more rocks but it’s more than just topography.

There are cattle guards, loose livestock, a plethora of wildlife in each direction and herds of “pet” (I’m calling them pet because often they’re just kept for hunters) elk, exotic antelope, bison and more.

Tim and I are techy city slickers, so for us – a weekend like this is super relaxing and novel. We squeal in delight when we see baby sheep sleeping in the middle of the road, and when I see “interesting” forms of taking livestock you bet your bluebonnets that I’m going to take a picture.

Aside from chillin’ in the countryside, there’s also some good hiking. We have climbed Enchanted Rock before, which is mostly a steep but flat walk up the side of a giant hill.

This time though, I had a blonde moment of sorts and took us on the wrong path. Instead of a well trekked, gradual incline we found ourselves climbing up and over tons of boulders. It was pretty fun… especially if you make yourself forget that there are probably rattle snakes hiding everywhere below your feet.

So we ended up on a slightly less enchanted rock, but it was fun getting there for sure.

The rest of our time was spent battling these guys:

I’ve lived in Texas for five years now and have never seen a scorpion. I’ve heard about other people dealing with scorpions, and I figured that they were hallucinating or I was blessed with an anti-scorpion aura or something. That was until I went to put Simon’s bridle on Thursday evening, and looked down to find a scorpion on my arm.

ON MY ARM!

Luckily, it was day time so it was “sleeping”. I think it was hiding in a saddle pad that I shook out, and I shook the devil creature on myself. I just flicked it off, and swore to never see another scorpion again.

Until we got to our hill country cabin, and sat on the front porch to relax.

Scorpions. Scorpions everywhere!

Turns out, neither me or my husband are very brave about scorpions. We squealed. We stomped. We killed three the first night before hiding back in the house, but we weren’t sure the house was safe. We took apart every linen on the bed (even pillow cases) before we declared it scorpion free.

The next day we went to Walmart and bought anti-scorpion powder, which we shook all over the front bushes of the house and then doused with water to hide the now snow-white bushes. Night two at the cabin yielded one scorpion on the front porch, which we killed and then retreated inside. We thought the back porch was safe, until my husband put his hand in the bushes to pick up some cash that fell out of his pocket only to have a scorpion crawl on his arm.

The next morning I found a dead scorpion in the kitchen.

So basically, I’m never leaving Austin again. Complain about hipsters all you want… at least I have never seen a scorpion in my house… yet.

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