Arachnida

 This little guy made his way across the road as Nathan was motorbiking his way home from work. It's good to keep an eye on the road ahead of you for just such occasions. The other day, I was out at night cruising along on the motorbike when I saw a snake on the path ahead. Unfortunately, I was too close to swerve, so I closed my eyes, got my feet as far from the road as I could, and yelled as I ran over him. That's me, not Nathan. Nathan stopped and put the scorpion into the bike's basket and brought it home for the kids to see.

 The kids were eager to see their first real scorpion, but he seemed pretty eager to get away from them.

This is Nathan's hand. I would never put my hand this close to a scorpion.  I looked the scorpion up online and learned a few new things. (thank you Wikipedia.) Did you know that there are almost 2,000 scorpion species and that 30-40 of those have strong enough poison to kill a person? I noticed that this one seems to be missing it's venomous stinger.

 Safe with dad.

 Teaching moment.

 Did you know that some species can change their metabolic rate, allowing them to live on one meal per year? Now wouldn't that be handy. Until I came to Laos, I had always thought Scorpions were just desert dwellers. Actually, they're found on all major land masses, except Antarctica. I'm actually glad I finally saw one. It seems they're not all that uncommon here, but somehow I've only seen the dead ones. This here is my first official live scorpion siting.