I'll take silly little king snakes and roaches over what lives here in Arizona. I've only seen one scorpion, and none in or near where I live now, but a friend of mine was seeing three or four a day. Thankfully he lived on the other side of Phoenix.
Now, if it had been a rattlesnake or cottonmouth or water moccasin, then I've got issues.
On the other hand, it might be naive, but the last place I'd expect to find a snake is in the $300+ a night Contemporary. Sheesh!
we live in an area like that....
my worst encounter was about 16 years ago.....DS (5 years old at the time) and I were in the basement putting toys away...i was on one side he was on the other....
suddenly he says "mommy......"
i turned to look.....i realized he was trying to think of the word for what he was pointing at on the floor....
i saw what he was pointing to and thought it was one of those rubber toys that you use to frighten people....a toy scorpion......
that is until i saw the tail curl up......this thing was HUGE....
oh oh.....i yelled "scorpion" and sprung into action....
i took off my sandal and came across the basement and began wacking that thing with every bit of my strength.....i'm not sure how many it took as i was kind of in a wacking frenzy......but when i stopped, it was dead....thank god...
anyway...we were pretty freaked out by that experience....the fact that it was a black rather than the deadly yellow scorpion calmed us a wee bit...but only a wee bit..
more recently i encountered a viper up close and personal....though thankfully not in the house....
it was slithering along the top of the wall next to the driveway....
though i have always known that vipers are native to where we live and that there are even vipers living in the bushes in the park across the street from us (since a boy was bitten there a few years ago and had to be rushed to the hospital for the antidote), i hadn't personally seen one other than in the zoo....
so i was shocked when i saw it on the wall slithering along....it was quite large.....not something i want to run into again......and certainly not in the house....even on the wall (10 feet from the front door) it totally creeped me out....and of course, i told DD, DS and DH not to leave the front door open so that they can't slither in...yeah right....we always have the front door open (so the dog can run in and out) and the patio door and the windows.....and no screens anywhere.....so if they want to come in, the welcome mat is waiting....
as for cockroaches - we have those huge flying ones that you can saddle up and ride... i think they're what people call palmetto bugs, but they're not called that here....here they're called Jukim (local language)....cute name for a hideous, disgusting bug that you have to learn to live with since they fly....so all the spraying in the world doesn't get rid of them entirely....
but still, between the three, scorpions, vipers, and palmetto bugs, i'll take the palmettos any day....
Somehow I chased it out the door (not sure how I got past it to open the door and then got it out the door, but I did). Now I'm constantly thinking there are more living in the walls, though that was the only one we ever saw and it was over a year ago. Every time I mention it DH thinks I'm nuts! A snake in my room would seriously freak me out. DH and I are ready to buy at BLT, but now I'm a little worried... I don't want our first DVC stay to go like this 
Why do I have to have such an active imagination? WIll my vacations in WDW ever be the same? Someone please tell me they are thoroughly investigating all the surrounding rooms and air ducts.
ugh!
