Thanks for all the comments, Joyce. I had fun reading all of them... and you compelled me to address a common misunderstanding :-)

There's this odd myth going around (particularly in the southwestern parts of this great nation) that the potency of a scorpion's venom is inversely proportional to its size. In other words, the smaller the scorpion, the more dangerous it is.

The way it got started is because of two common species that live in Arizona. One of them is the Arizona desert hairy scorpion (Hadrurus arizonensis)...

[photo by Daniel Estabrooks]

The other one is the Arizona bark scorpion (Centruroides sculpturatus), which looks like this...

[photo by Matt Reinbold]

The Arizona desert hairy is more than twice the size of the bark scorpion, but the bark scorpion has a much more potent sting. It doesn't usually require hospitalization, but it has killed people in rare instances, and it will cause you a great deal of pain and other uncomfortable sensations. (Don't ask me how I know this.)

Of course, the problem here is that we're making a generalization based on two species. There are 38 species (give or take a few, depending on current taxonomy) in Arizona, and the Arizona bark scorpion is the only one that's potentially dangerous to humans. And even though it's less than half the size of the Arizona desert hairy, it's actually bigger than almost all the other species in the state.

So size doesn't mean anything in Arizona. The best approach is to just learn what the Arizona bark scorpion looks like, and then you know that anything else is safe. And it doesn't work in the rest of the world either. The scorpion responsible for the most human deaths is the North African fat-tailed scorpion (Androctonus australis)...

[Photo by Daniel Estabrooks]

This species is bigger than almost anything in the United States (though not quite as large as the desert hairies), so, again, the myth is disproven.

And just for the record, Joyce, nothing in the Carlsbad area is dangerous :-)