Bruce met a guy last year at Burning Man, who billed himself as the Bug Doctor (or some such). He mentioned to Bruce that when viewed under a black light, scorpions glow an iridescent bluish-green color. Bruce tested and verified this claim at his earliest opportunity.

Bruce told this fact to us, and we were eager to see for ourselves. After dark, we fired up the black light, and started turning over rocks. The 1st few rocks turned up nothing. We turned over another and waved the light above it and - saw a tiny neon glow, about the size of a shirt button, in the shape of a scorpion.

I didn't know they could be so small, so I momentarily suspected that this was a ruse, and that Bruce had planted a fake glow-in-the-dark plastic scorpion there. But a gentle prod with a stick proved that this was indeed the real thing. It was amazing -- it glowed as bright as anything I had ever seen under a black light.

We turned over a bunch more rocks, and found a bunch more scorpions, most of which were quite a bit bigger, with bodies about a couple inches long. I took about 50 pictures of them, but since I couldn't see to focus, and I didn't have a tripod for the super-slow exposures, all of the images came out blurry. Here, and the following 2 images, are the best of the lot.