Preston Phillips: Scorpion hunters with a heart. We’ll show you how they’re clearing these critters the most humane way possible and answers as to why they are targeting this alley in particular.
Anchor: Well they are small but they pack a powerful punch. Scorpions are on the move once again trying to creep in your home. But imagine having dozens just taking over your yard. CBS 5’s Preston Phillips live now with scorpion hunter with information Preston you’ll want to know. Preston.
Preston Phillips: Yeah that’s right Sean. We are in this dark alley in Tempe chalk full of these Bark Scorpions. The ones that pack that painful punch. But hey, we point the camera over here with the naked eye, you really can’t see anything. One I flip on the black light those of you know, yup they glow in the dark. And there they are small but man they pack a punch. These Bark Scorpions one of 50 species here in the desert considered the smallest and most dangerous. You don’t want to get stung by one of those. We are with a local company tonight Scorpion Sweepers, out of Scottsdale. You guys were written up in the New York Times yesterday because of how you humanely get rid of them. Let’s show them what we found tonight, we’ve got about 30 bark scorpions in just the small amount of time we’ve been here. But tell me what you guys do for this humane treatment, how you get rid of them? You don’t use any chemicals and stuff.
Toby Riley: Yeah, so we don’t use any pesticides. We are following this new trend that people don’t want kids and animals and pets getting exposed to pesticides. We go in and manually remove them.
Preston Phillips: Show me how you do it. Come on over here to the wall, you see this guy over here with his tail up. How do you get him out of here?
Toby Riley: You come in and have these big tweezers and we just snag them up real quick. Then they kind of play dead.
Preston Phillips: So real quick. What tips do you have for people if they get scorpions at their house, they want to get rid of them, prevent them what do they do?
Toby Riley: You want to remove all of your fallen organic debris, that includes citrus fruit, leaves, pick up after your pets, and you want to trim your vegetation up off the ground as well as sealing your perimeter walls.
Preston Phillips: Very cool. So we have got about 30 Bark Scorpions here tonight. Scorpion Sweepers, you guys are out here doing a service for people in the neighborhood tonight, just kind of getting rid of them. You’re going to take them and freeze them to death.
Toby Riley: Yeah.
Preston Phillips: Alright, humane. The most humane way to get rid of Bark Scorpions. We’re live tonight in this beautiful dark alley in Tempe. Preston Phillips CBS 5 news.
On April 29th, 2016 we were featured on the CBS 5 Ten O’clock news. They had seen our story in The New York Times and wanted to highlight our humane services. They piece is about two minutes long and follows us through an alley in Tempe, Arizona.
In this two minute segment, CBS 5 reporter Preston Phillips interviews our Scorpion Sweeper, Toby Riley. They walk down an alley in Tempe, Arizona finding and collecting Arizona Bark Scorpions. During the interview, Toby discusses how to prevent scorpions and why they are so prevalent in the area. They highlight our chemical, pesticide-free approach and talk about how it is the most humane way to exterminate the scorpions.
CBS 5 and Channel 3 news contacted us wanting to do a story about our scorpion control methods after reading our article in the New York Times. Happy to help, we took them to our favorite alley in Tempe, Arizona. These two stations are owned by the same company so the two segments were shot about ten minutes apart. You can see the Channel 3 segment here.
You can see in the picture above and a couple of shots in the segment the report’s scorpion collecting stick. It was a long pole with a UV light attached and some tongs at the end. This tool did not work too well and was much less efficient than our forceps. While it looks fancy we would not recommend investing in one.
Prior to the shoot we went down the alley and collect scorpions for about twenty minutes. The first scorpion was seen about six feet into the alley. The ones used in the shoot to show what they look like with and without UV light were not placed, they were found beforehand.
This alley had a lot of debris in it from plant material, overgrown trees, trash, and bugs. This alley has many unsealed property walls that provide a great habitat for the scorpions and allow access points into homeowners walls. A great way to limit the scorpions in this location would be to Seal The Property Walls.
