Keep Spiders, Bugs, and Scorpions Off Your Bed at Night

Recently, my husband and I had a shocking experience with a nasty critter. I was up late writing with my laptop in bed with me while my husband snoozed away. All of a sudden he yells out some unarticulated gibberish. I assume he's having a bad dream and try to comfort him by lightly patting on his chest, telling him to go back to sleep. Half asleep, half awake, he mumbles something about feeling like a sharp piece of glass just cut one of his fingers. Of course I know that didn't happen which reinforces in my mind that he must be just having a bad dream.

I look over at him and try to shush him to sleep and there's something crawling on his head! I jump out of bed faster than I ever have in my entire life, while yelling at him to get out of bed and shake whatever it is off his head. Now we're both wide awake and alert! With all the lights on, I look through the sheets to find whatever it was that stung or bit my husband on his hand.

Lo and Behold! It's a brown scorpion. I didn't even know we have scorpions in Arkansas! The only thing I've ever heard about scorpions is that they can kill you. With that in mind, plus the fact that my husband is highly allergic to fire ants and has to keep an epi pen with him at all times, causes us to be even more alarmed; we assume he is in grave danger. With a 911 operator on the phone, we frantically look throughout our home for an epi pen and couldn't find one, which further heightened our state of alarm.

Within minutes, the medics arrive and assure us that while a scorpion bite can be very painful, their sting cannot kill you--well at least not from scorpions in Arkansas, anyway. What a relief! We keep his painful hand on ice all night.

For several nights it was tough trying to fall asleep. Both of us had flashbacks of the scorpion and kept having that crawling feeling -- you know the feeling you get after seeing a spider or having one crawling on you.

From that experience, I learned that dust ruffles that touch the floor invite all kinds of spiders and bugs into your bed. I never knew that. Immediately our long, beautiful red dust ruffle was removed from our bed and will never be put back on again!!

One Easy Safeguard for Your Bed

If you have a dust ruffle that touches the floor, I advise you to remove yours, too. If you must have a dust ruffle on your bed, there's an easy solution. Buy a dust ruffle that's smaller than your bed size.

• If you have a king size bed, buy a queen size dust ruffle.
• If you have a queen size bed, buy a full size dust ruffle.
• If you have a full size bed, buy a twin size dust ruffle.
• If you have a twin size bed, get safety pins and pin up your dust ruffle so that it doesn't touch the floor.

Be sure not to have the pins on the sides of your box spring mattress. They could come undone and stick you when you're standing close to your bed. Instead, put the pins on top of your box spring mattress so that when you put your mattress back on your bed, the mattress is laying directly on top of the pins.

I hope this helps some of you and you don't have any scorpions in your bed any time soon! And remember, always do a spider check before getting into bed!