Welcome to this issue of Stumped by Nature, where we notice nature lurking just beyond our screens, curate a list of outside-y events in Austin, and build community with other folks in the thick of the startup ecosystem.
In this week’s issue:
🦂 Scorpions
🌤️ Upcoming outdoors events
🎃 Pumpkin-adjacent fun
Let’s dig in!
-Nicole
PS. Have a nature-related business or nonprofit? I’m creating a directory. It’s free to join, and you can plop your business details in here. Have your nature-based buddies fill this out too!
PPS. Come meet great people who go outside together: join ATX Outsiders.
Upcoming events I’m hosting:
Sunday, October 11: A private event just for members of ATX Outsiders. It involves 80± bats.
Monday, November 2: Austin Reading Club: read a book of your choice and meet a couple dozen fellow readers. Solitary hobbies don’t have to be isolating.
NATURE SPOTLIGHT
In honor of Halloween season, I’ve been collecting horrors. There are a lot of them.
This topic fell into my foyer, with its bad boy reputation and jump scare potential.
Today we’re digging into scorpions.
During the 6 o’clock hour last Friday morning, coaxing a kindergartener that even Fridays are school days, we paused shoe-putting-on time to calmly observe that we were not alone.
Is it a feature of having Texan children that they had zero emotional response to seeing a scorpion?
What are scorpions?
Members of the arachnid family, these eight-legged creatures are cousins to spiders, ticks, and mites. Classification-wise, these are not bugs or insects, because there is nuance in the world. Arachnid. Just say arachnid and nod knowingly.
At a high level, they’re mid-level predators that balance out the food web, and they’ve outlived the dinosaurs. And they’ve done it in style.
They’ve got body parts
A few noteworthy pieces:
Pedipalps: an arachnid’s head-area appendage. You’ll know it by the thing jutting out between the jaws and first pair of walking legs. They’re lined with tiny sensory hairs to detect vibrations/movement
Chelae: at the tip of the pedipalp, this is the pincer, with a fixed finger and a movable finger. These pincers hold, crush, and guide food into the mouth. (Can you imagine the scorpion version of Hungry Hungry Hippos?)
Pectines: exclusive to scorpions, these are comb-like sensory organs on their undersides. The internet is throwing out words like peg sensilla and mechanosensation, and I’m going to trust that having peg-bearing teeth sweeping the ground is evolutionarily advantageous for reasons beyond why I like Roombas
Metasoma: the extra credit way to say segmented tail with a barb that acts like a hypodermic needle
They have bad vision even though they have more eyes than I feel comfortable typing. Think more than a Cybercab, less than a 6th generation Waymo.
March 4, 2026, night hike at Shield Ranch, where I realized a. scorpions glow under UV light b. they. are. everywhere
Those body parts aren’t just for show
Waxy layers of cuticle help scorpions be mostly watertight + conserve water
That cuticle includes compounds that fluoresce a blue-green aka they glow under UV light
A scorpion that’s just molted won’t glow under UV light until the exoskeleton hardens. When the carapace sets, it’s their time to shine
Why they glow at all is a good question. A leading theory is that their bodies work as a light sensor that helps them find shade
The scorpion mating ritual includes a dance called promenade à deux, which involves the male holding the female’s pincers and leading her back and forth until he finds a good spot to deposit a sperm packet
Scorplings come into the world via live birth. There are usually a few dozen live babies per brood, and they ride on their mother’s back until their first molt, about a week later
That’s about it for their socializing. Other than the mating dance and birth + piggyback riding, their only other intraspecies interaction is their hobby of cannibalism
Speaking of eating, they chop their prey into bits with their chelae, eject digestive juices, and liquefy bits of their prey before slurping in the predigested food (I repeat: can you imagine this version of Hungry Hungry Hippos?)
Scorpions can go months to close to a year without eating, thanks to very low metabolism. In addition to fellow scorpions, their diet consists of insects and spiders (arachnid!). They hunt at night.
Things like to eat them too, especially owls, lizards, centipedes, shrews, backyard chickens, and whoever in Bangkok’s Night Market has both buying power and skewers.
Another hobby: playing dead. Don’t fall for it. It’s a trap.
January 5, 2018, Bangkok, snacks not chosen. Just because you can eat something doesn’t mean you have to.
The most common local scorpions
Texas has 18 scorpion species, but in Austin it’s usually one of two:
Striped bark scorpion (Centruroides vittatus)
Striped bark scorpions are tan to yellowish, with two dark stripes down their back. They’re a few inches long, enjoy climbing walls and ceilings, and often get stuck in smooth-sided sinks and bathtubs. Favorite habitats: trees, shrubs, leaf litter, wood piles, rocky areas. As the weather shifts, they shift indoors.
Texas cave scorpion (Pseudouroctonus reddelli)
A slightly stockier species that live in the rocks in caves on the Edwards Plateau, but you’re unlikely to come across them unless you’re out at night with a UV light rock-flipping (which, should we do this?), or perhaps live in my house, because I’m pretty sure this is what I keep finding.
October 2, 2026, for a brief photoshoot before being ejected from its indoor pet attempt
Venom
Scorpion venom is a concoction of neurotoxins + tissue-penetrating enzymes. When hunting or defending themselves, they pipe that venom through their metasoma.
Size matters: pincer size is a relatively accurate gauge of venom potency.
The bigger the pincer, the weaker the venom tends to be—they can crush their prey more effectively.
Species with tiny, slender pincers rely more heavily on their stinging tails.
But, good news: our most common striped bark scorpions are usually medically unremarkable. Their stings are painful, but not usually dangerous to healthy adults.
The notoriety-lending scorpions:
Arizona bark scorpion in the Sonoran Desert
Deathstalker in the Middle East and North Africa
Indian red scorpion in South Asia
anything you find in Durango, Mexico, unless it’s bottled in booze or encased in resin
Of those, Deathstalker venom has been used in medical advancement—the chlorotoxin has been used as the basis for tumor paint, a fluorescent tool to light up brain tumors during surgery. There’s research investigating the venom’s compounds for antimicrobial and other medical applications. I don’t know how venom is extracted, but my hope is milking them, and I’m not going to ruin that mental image by looking it up.
Cohabiting with scorpions
They’re ancient. 400 million years ago, scorpion-like creatures were among the earliest to make the transition to land, with gills before they evolved to “book lungs.” Some ancient scorpions grew up to a meter in length, which reinforces that now is a great time to be alive.
Not unlike lice in their well-documented involvement with humanity, scorpions touch history from Babylonian astronomers, Egyptian and Greek mythology, and span literature ranging from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Old Testament to The House of the Scorpion.
In modern times, I had a conversation with some mom friends about what we survived while trying to be mammals/feed our infants. One pal was nursing her 2-month-old in bed when she felt a sting. But the baby was feeding, so she waited it out. And then she felt something moving under her robe near her baby’s head. Cue second sting. Cue carefully ejecting baby. Cue a screaming strip tease that resulted in both a scorpion and her robe landing on her husband.
In this scenario, do you:
A. move?
B. you just have to move
Conveniently, my friend’s postpartum edition of Naked and Afraid occurred within a year of her move into my neighborhood, to a beautiful lot intentionally not backing to greenbelt.
UPCOMING EVENTS
🗓️ October 8: Halloween Movie Nights: Twilight / Buffy the Vampire Slayer: healthy relationship dynamics not included
🗓️ October 9: FoundHer's Walk & Talk: momentum all around
🗓️ October 9-11: Austin City Limits, Weekend Two: there’ll be music
🗓️ October 10: Fall Native Plant Sale: bring your impulse control
🗓️ October 10: Beginner Birding Walk & Talk: play I spy with adults
🗓️ October 10: Lens on Nature: A Nature Preserve Photo Walk: Frame it up
🗓️ October 10: The Board Walks: Always a solid Saturday morning choice
🗓️ October 10: Beginner Biking: get those 4-8 year olds rolling
🗓️ October 11: Myco Cyco: urban biking + shroom foraging
🗓️ October 11: Nature Immersion Walk: soak it in
🗓️ October 12: Texas Parks & Wildlife: Backpacking Texas: Learn from the pros—this speaker line up is solid
🗓️ October 13: Sip & Solder: your window needs a stained glass spiderweb
🗓️ October 13: Gardening for Birds & Pollinators: play the long game
🗓️ October 13: Tuesday Twilights: after hours gardens + live music
🗓️ October 14: Thought Experiments on Patios: think with strangers
🗓️ October 14: Fall Garden Bouquets: build your own bouquet
🗓️ October 14: Music on the Trail: grab a seat and take it easy
🗓️ October 14: Underground Terror at Inner Space Cavern: the waitlist could be worth a try
🗓️ Through January 31: Fortlandia: new terrain to explore
PUMPKIN-ADJACENT FUN
🎃 Texas Pumpkin Fest: there will be professional wrestling + pumpkin pie eating contests + a mechanical bull that is surely a chiropractor’s top of funnel
🎃 Indian Springs Ranch: Includes a pumpkin patch + exotic animals + a corn pit south of Austin
🎃 Pumpkin Nights: Explore immersive pumpkin lands in East Austin. It’s legit.
🎃 Sweet Berry Farm: Mazes, rides, and pumpkins with three exclamation marks in Marble Falls
🎃 Sweet Eats Fruit Farm: Pig races, apple cannons, wagon rides, and pumpkins with two exclamation marks in Georgetown
🎃 Mama Mary's Farm: What you’d expect from a pumpkin patch, this time in Creedmoor
🎃 Uhland Fall Fest: The parking’s on Dairy Road. Enough said.
PANTRY MOTH UPDATE
I wrote about my pantry moth infestation on June 25, 2026.
I’m aiming for at least 45 moth-free days before I reclaim my pantry.
I saw them before I ate them this time. (And chose not to eat them, to be clear.)
That’s all for this week!
In the meantime, can we avoid using the phrase sperm packet?
-Nicole
OPTIONAL SIDE QUESTS
🪵 Need to metabolize something? I help people write. Let’s chat.
🪵 Shall we take this outside? Of course.
🪵 Are you sitting on a misogi-esque story? Spill.
🪵 Follow my calendar to know when we’re rallying.
🪵 Is this newsletter not your vibe? Forward it to your enemies to make them suffer too.
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