A Photo Says A Thousand Words...or does it?

Sometimes the picture tells the story.  Sometimes the story explains the picture.  This blip is the latter. Bear with me.  I think I'll begin at the end; the end of the day, that is.  I have been known to go bump in the night so I have motion nightlights in key locations.  As I was headed for bed  the little light switched on giving a slight glow to the darkness.  At the same time I noticed what I thought was a bit of fuzz on the carpet and gave it a little swipe with the side of my foot. I was stunned to see that bit of fuzz take off like a bat out of hell.

I had a small bowl holding wrapped candies on the table.  I grabbed it, tossed the candies and bashed that sucker as hard as I could.  It kept moving.  It was at that point I knew what I was messing with...the nearly indestructible scorpion.  I bashed it again as ferociously as I could but the little b*****d kept moving.  I finally flipped the bowl over and captured him.  Then I placed a heavy plate on top.

I texted my bug guy, Steve, and without going into detail, the first thing I wrote was:  EEEK!!!! He would come in the morning but in the meantime, who the heck could unwind enough to sleep after that?!

Now to explain the pretty awful photo above.  Since sleep wasn't happening I decided to go out and test the lens I got a few days ago.  It's a Sigma 17-50 mm and is supposed to be pretty good at night. I took a shot down the street and when I looked at it I was shocked.  Were those stars above the houses?  Yowsa!  I saw Orion up there, leaned on the house, took a deep breath, held it and shot a few times.  Keep in mind that my tripod is in the shop which explains, despite my "stop breathing" method of photography, its blurriness. By the way, I ran this photo through three programs to reduce noise.  There's virtually none left.  There were zillions of stars. I'm gonna keep the lens.

Back to the scorpion. When Steve lifted the bowl the thing was still alive.  He was wearing gloves but went for a tool with which to snag it because that thing would sting him right through them (see the extra). It fought getting picked up as much as I've seen rattlers fight the same thing. I nearly stepped on that damn scorpion.  It wouldn't have been pleasant...