You found one. Now what?

Three questions decide what happens next, in this order: is anyone hurt, what species is it, and does one mean many.

1. Is anyone hurt?

If someone has been stung, that comes first — the steps are here. Keeping the specimen genuinely helps a doctor, but it is never worth chasing one to get it.

2. Catch it without touching it

A wide-mouth jar and a piece of card. Scorpions cannot climb clean glass, so once it is in, it stays. Do not squash it barefoot, do not pick it up, and do not use a vacuum — they survive that surprisingly often and you have then moved the problem inside the machine.

If you only want it gone, sweep it onto the card and put it well away from the house. That solves this evening and nothing else.

3. Which one is it?

Thin pincers, thin tail

Arizona bark scorpion. Pale straw, 2–3 inches with the tail, looks fragile. The only one in the United States whose sting is medically serious. Climbs walls.

Thick pincers, striped tail

Stripe-tailed. Stockier, darker, dark bands along the tail. Stings like a wasp and that is the end of it. Stays on the ground.

Big and bristly

Desert hairy scorpion. Four to five inches, yellow legs, dark back. Alarming to look at, mild sting. Eats other scorpions, including bark scorpions.

Where you found it is itself a clue. Bark scorpions climb; the others do not. Anything on a wall, a ceiling, a curtain or the top of a door frame is a bark scorpion, whatever it looks like.

4. Does one mean many?

Not always. Use where and when:

Where you found it	What it usually means
Garage, summer, one only	ordinary for Havasu — watch, no panic
Bedroom or bathroom	there is a route in; act
High on a wall or ceiling	bark scorpion, and it is climbing indoors
Several in a week	a population with access, not visitors
Winter, indoors	they are living inside, not wandering in

The last row is the one people miss. Outdoor activity drops when nights cool; anything indoors in January did not come in from the yard that evening.

5. Check with UV before you decide

A 395 nm flashlight costs very little and answers the question in twenty minutes.

An hour after full dark, walk the perimeter slowly: base of retaining walls, the cut face behind the house, around irrigation boxes, under paver edges, and up the wall by doors and windows. Counting what you see beats guessing.

Two cautions. A freshly moulted scorpion barely glows. And moults themselves glow — a hollow shell that does not move is not a scorpion, but it does mean they are breeding nearby.

Have someone identify and survey itFree inspection, licensed Havasu technicians

Then close the routes: the exclusion list.