Finally obtained coveted scorpion brooch!
I FINALLY have this in hand! Obtaining such a brooch has been a vendetta for months, beginning when I saw one available for purchase, put it "in my cart", and clicked "buy", only to find that someone else had purchased it in the SPLIT SECOND that elapsed after I put it "in my cart" and before I clicked "buy".
Even better: This one is slightly bigger than the one I missed out on, and that other brooch had two fewer opals and lacked the safety chain with pin present here.
No need to point out that a scorpion's pincers do not count as two of its eight legs, as I am a big enough fan of creepy crawly jewelry to be well aware of that shortfall. It seems, however, that jewelers were not familiar with the minutia of arachnid anatomy at the time brooches such as this were made.