Anyone living in Arizona knows that the last thing you want to find inhabiting the place you are living are a family of Arizona bark scorpions. Finding one is bad enough, but to have an actual infestation is likely anyone’s idea of a living nightmare. Theo Epstein, President of Baseball Operations for the Chicago Cubs, is currently involved in a lawsuit with landlords John and Mary Valentino for renting him and his family a home in Paradise Valley, Arizona during the Cubs spring training in 2015, in which they discovered a massive infestation of Arizona bark scorpions.
When they moved into the million-dollar home, Epstein’s family was horrified when they began stumbling upon scorpions all around their supposedly amazing rental property. After calling in an exterminator, they were informed that a huge family of Arizona bark scorpions were also residents of the house. Forty five scorpions in total were located throughout the property, with most of them living in five containers filled with wood and stone debris in the backyard. As the exterminator put it, when he shined a black light on the pack of scorpions, they “lit up like a Christmas tree.” It was determined that based on the size and age range of the scorpion population, they had been inhabiting that place for a long time and had a well established adult and juvenile population. The Epsteins were naturally very upset by this revelation, as they posed a particular threat to the family’s two young children and tiny dog, who, like most children and dogs, spent quite a bit of time out in the backyard.
The family ended up getting the hell out of their rental home a few weeks before their short-term lease ended, and asked that the Valentinos refund their $5,000 security deposit in addition to compensating them for the extra rent they had to pay to live somewhere else for those last couple weeks. However, the Valentinos did not take this lying down, claiming the Epsteins owed them the rather large sum of $51,405 for damages to the home they caused during their two month stay. Much of it sounds rather like the kinds of claims shady landlords would make in order to make some money. But, there was one claim that could very well be true, and is the reason this lawsuit hasn’t been settled yet. Apparently, the family’s tiny 10 pound dog has some issues with urinating in the house, and left quite the mark over the two months it roamed the place. Even after the Valentino’s had the house thoroughly cleaned, the smell of dog urine did not go away, and according to the couple, “penetrated through the carpeting and pad to the slab” underneath in addition to stains in the tile grout. I’m not sure if I’m more horrified of the scorpions or all of that dog pee.
Have you ever experienced an infestation of scorpions?
