Great ill calls for great remedies. I need an insuperable precinct, much more extensive than that of the cages, which establishments do not give scope to the pastimes of my specimens. I have a forcing-frame in which some fleshy plants are stored during the winter. It goes to a depth of three feet into the ground. The brick work is plastered and [[24]]smoothed with all the care that the mason’s trowel and wet rag can give it. I cover the bottom with fine sand and large flat stones distributed here and there. Having made these preparations, I instal inside the frame, each under his own stone, the remaining Scorpions, and those which I have captured this very morning complete my collection. With the aid of this vertical barrier shall I this time retain my specimens and see what interests me so greatly?
I shall see nothing at all. Next morning, all of them, old and new, have disappeared. There were twenty of them: and not one remains. Had I reflected ever so little, I should have expected this. At the season of persistent rain, in the autumn, how often have I not found the Black Scorpion hiding in the crevices of the windows? Fleeing the dampness of his usual retreats, the dark corners of the yards, he has clambered up to me by scaling the front wall to the height of the first storey. The slight roughness of the plaster was enough to enable his grapnels to make the perpendicular ascent.
Despite his corpulence, the Languedocian is as good a climber as the Black Scorpion. [[25]]I have a proof of it before my eyes. A barrier three feet high, as smooth as a wash of common mortar can make it, has not stopped one of my captives. In a single night, the whole band has decamped from the frame.
Rearing in the open air, even within walls, is recognized as being impracticable: the lack of discipline in the flock nullifies the shepherd’s devices. One resource alone remains, that of internment under cover. Thus the year ends, with some ten pans standing on the large table in my study. Out of doors is prohibited: those night prowlers, the cats, seeing something move about in my appliances, would upset everything.
On the other hand, the population is restricted under each cover and amounts to two or three inhabitants at most. There is no space. In the absence of a sufficiency of neighbours and also of the violent exposure to the sun which they enjoyed on their native hills, the prisoners on my table seem smitten with home-sickness and hardly respond to my expectations. Cowering under their potsherds or hanging to the trellis, most of them [[26]]slumber, dreaming of liberty. The small results which I obtain from my bored specimens is far from satisfying me. I want something more than this. The close of the year is spent in gleaning petty facts and making plans for a better establishment.
The outcome of these plans is a glazed prison whose panes will give no hold to the grapnels and will make climbing impossible. The joiner builds me a frame, the glazier completes the work. I myself varnish the woodwork, so as to make the uprights very slippery. The structure looks like four window-frames placed side by side and put together to form a rectangle. The bottom is a flooring with a layer of sand. A lid covers it altogether when the weather is cold and especially when the rain threatens a flood, which would have disastrous effects on this undrained ground. It is raised more or less high according to the state of the day. The enclosure has ample room for two dozen chambers, each with its potsherd and its occupant. Moreover, wide alleys and spacious cross-roads allow long walks to be taken without hindrance.
Well, at the very moment when I believe [[27]]myself to have solved the housing-question satisfactorily, I perceive that the glazed park will not retain its population long, if I do not invent a remedy. The glass stops short any attempt at scaling: for lack of adhesive sandals, the Scorpions cannot grip a surface of this kind. They flounder against the panes, it is true, and raise themselves to their full length on the support of their tail: an excellent buttress, but they have hardly left the ground before they fall back again, heavily.
Things go wrong in respect of the wooden uprights, though these are made as narrow as possible and varnished with particular care. The stubborn climbers clamber little by little along these smooth tracks; they halt from time to time, clinging to the greasy pole, and then resume the difficult ascent. I surprise some who have reached the top and are on the point of escaping. My tweezers replace them in the fold. As the ventilation of the home demands that the lid should remain raised during the greater part of the day, the place would soon be wholly deserted if I did not see to it.
I think of greasing the uprights with a [[28]]mixture of oil and soap. This restrains the fugitives slightly, without succeeding in stopping them. Their delicate little claws manage to sink into the pores of the wood through the substance coating it and the ascent begins anew. Let us try a non-porous obstacle. I hang the walls with glazed paper. This time the difficulty is insurmountable for the big, pot-bellied ones; it is not quite so effective with regard to the others, who, being nimbler in their gait, try to hoist themselves up and often succeed in doing so. I get the better of them only by glossing the glazed paper with soot.
Henceforth there are no more escapes, though attempts at flight continue. Coming after the experiment with the forcing-frames, these feats of prowess on slippery surfaces tell us all there is to learn about an aptitude which the animal’s corpulence was far from leading us to suspect. Like his black colleague who enters our houses, the Languedocian Scorpion is a skilled climber.