TEMPE, Ariz.—Mike Golleher and Jeremiah Sourp came prepared for the hunt, dressed for protection with boots tightened, sleeves down, and cargo pants secured.
Ultraviolet flashlights clicked on as they took positions along the concrete walls of a drainage canal behind an upscale Tempe neighborhood in the fading twilight.
Golleher entered first, sweeping his beam in slow, horizontal passes across the slab.
“When you see them, they really pop,” said Golleher, 46, senior scorpion specialist at Seal Out Scorpions in Tempe.
Sourp, 22, the company’s pest management operations manager, worked the base of the walls where concrete met dirt and weeds, checking seams, joints, and fractures opened by desert heat….