Scorpions and Jumping spiders (don't read if you're in the new Morocco group coming in 2 days)

I used to be afraid of jumping spiders. There's no telling how many hours of my life were squandered fter a boy in 2nd grade told me about them, since after that fateful day I no longer would sit down in the loo without having first checked the entire perimeter of the room multiple times.

But times change, I've grown some since then and I realize how much higher up the food chain I am. Even if there ARE jumping spiders, I could care less ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_spider apparently there are 5000 species of them, making it the most common type of spider in the world).

Nor was I scared of scorpions. Unlike jumping spiders, I actually saw a scorpion while I was on the toilet. Luckily my casbah is equipped with both western and squat toilets, so when last week a scorpion jumped out of nowhere at me, I was able to remain in position while I just lifted my feet up until it left the room through a hole in the wall.

No big deal. I was surprised when I saw my first scorpion late one night while I was washing my hands. I turned the faucet on and it was a few inches below my hands in the sink, the water giving it a bath even. No cause for alarm--maybe because at first I didnt recognize it as a scorpion... the tail was flat, not curved, and it was only by watching the pinchers move that I figured out what this 8-inch long black thing was that got itself stuck 4 feet off the ground in my sink--I notified my dad and he quickly stomped it to death.

Seen about 5 or 6 scorpions now, half of them dead. They look kind of mentally slow, especially the one I saw that traveled across the path where I was running one day.

But now I'm terrified of them. Because my host brother told me exactly how it was that the scorpion got into the sink--they can climb walls. That's not so bad, I guess, not like they can jump or anything. But then he said how they are on the walls and they hide when the lights come on. Which is scary. It's like, the dark tower I live in has many walls and few lights. It's basically open to the elements other the door to my room. Knowing that they are waiting and they hide, somehow that makes it worse.

Luckily I have a Nokia 1000, a phone famous among PCVs for the fact that it has an LED light on the end. It's strong enough, it might send the scorpions back into hiding, so long as I give the wall a good sweep with it ahead of me each time I head out the door.