I think I may have told this story before, but...
When I was stationed at NAS China Lake, Ca. around 1965-66, I was assigned to a mobile emergency standby radar unit. The air station we were attached to flew drones. Not like the drones of today, but we did fly the what was the beginning of the drone program. Anyway, my radar unit consisted of a main radar trailer, a huge diesel trailer mounted generator, and a maintenance trailer. Our job was to remain on standby, ready to take over, should anything go wrong with the main drone control system operated from the hangar across the runway from us. That meant, we virtually had nothing to do but wait on standby when they were flying a drone...lots of waiting...bored silly. So, we played a lot of cribbage, chess, and cards. Being in the Mojave Desert, we had lots of sand, so we also constructed some fine horseshoe pits. I got pretty good at it.
Anyway, back to scorpions, it was a not-so-hot day (one of few) and there was no flight ops scheduled, so the best game of all began, double-deck pinochle. Since our unit was a mobile site, there were several large cable spools to store the large heavy cables that stretched between trailers and we had laid one on its side and slid it under the main, high-off-the-ground trailers. It made a perfect card table...when the wind wasn't blowing (which was almost never, but this one of those days). As 4 of us sat around the cable spool on buckets, hunkered down (well, the trailer wasn't THAT high off the ground) playing cards, I looked down and saw what I thought was the tail of scorpion sticking out from under the spool. A BIG tail! Which one would have to assume was attached to a big scorpion. I wasn't about to try to pick that rascal up without help, so I went to the maintenance trailer and found an empty coffee can and a pair of long handle hemostats. I went back to the card table and carefully took hold of the scorpion tail, trying not to harm it, but also, trying to maintain control. I planned to pull it out and drop it in the coffee can. Simple, right.
I pulled. I tugged. The scorpion fought back, trying to crawl further under the spool. I had to have the other guys tip the spool up a little so I could pull it out. Finally, the scorpion lost its grip and out it came. The other guys dropped the spool and left.
What I had hold of made me think of "tiger by the tail". The tail I had hold of was over twice as big as it had appeared sticking out from under the spool. It was a shiny black scorpion longer than and as wide as my hand. I took me several tries before I finally got that monster into the 3 lb. coffee can. Then I had to get the lid on and let go with the hemostats without it jumping back out.
The little town of Ridgecrest was settled around the south and west of the base. Being in the desert, they like us, had to do "desert stuff" to occupy their time and the local newspaper owner/editor/reporter/printer had decided to become the local desert life expert. We contacted him and asked if he wanted to see this big scorpion. Dubiously, as he seen everything in his many years there, he said we could bring it over. Which we did.
The newspaper man looked like an old prospector. Reminded me somewhat of a fat Gabby Hayes, gray tobacco stained beard and all. He led us back to his tiny office where we four packed ourselves in the room with the paper man, surrounding his desk. I handed the coffee can to the man as the critter inside it made heavy scratching sounds. I warned him of the monster inside, but he just waved me off and popped off the coffee can lid. Then he immediately popped the lid back on. "That IS a big one!", he exclaimed.
My scorpion made the next edition of the Ridgecrest newspaper.
