In the night, I had a hard time falling asleep. When I went down to go to the bathroom, I decided to check upon the Emperor scorpion (Pandinus imperator) I had bought the 20th of last month. It had been gone from view several days ago, hiding in its burrow.
When I decorated the terrarium for the Emperor scorpion 12 days ago, I had made a small hole under the largest log - to the left of the log in the above photo - hoping that the scorpion would use it as a starting point for its burrow. But the first days it tried to dig behind a much smaller piece of wood, in one corner of the terrarim (top left in the above photo).
After some time it decided to use the hole under the log, and started to move more and more substrate out of it. A few days later I saw the scorpion's pedipalps (claws) stick out from under the other side of the log, on the waterdish side. So I carefully moved the waterdish a bit more out of the way.
And in the weekend the scorpion was gone from view, and I noticed it had extended it's burrow until it bumped into the glass ("up" in the above photo). The good thing about this was that it allowed me a peek into its burrow. The bottom of the burrow is about 9 cm below the surface of the substrate, which itself is about 14 cm thick.
Anyway, in the night when, on a hunch, I checked upon the Emperor scorpion, and peeked into its burrow I discovered that I had been right all along, the scorpion was a pregnant female when I bought it the 20th of March. Was pregnant. Because I could now clearly see several baby scorpions on her back. I tried to take a few photos, which was not easy with the flash bouncing back off the glass, and the one shown above was the best out of four.
Before I went back to the bed, with a huge smile on my face, I put an index card in front of the glass to avoid light entering the burrow. I wanted to keep this opportunity to peek into the burrow for as long as possible.