Venomous scorpion secretly lives with family for a week after stowing away in their luggage
FOX NEWS - This might be one of the most memorable souvenirs ever.
After a vacation to Bali, a family was shocked to find that they accidentally brought a stowaway home with them: a live scorpion. Even more shocking: they didn’t discover the animal crawling around their house until a week after they returned home.
Rory and Isabell Neighbour, from England, took an 11-night trip to Bali over the holidays, SWNS reports. They believe that they accidentally picked up the 7-centimeters-long Chinese Swimming Scorpion while visiting a tiny island off the coast of Lombok in Indonesia.
The family says that they had been informed that there were scorpions on the island and that they left their beach shoes outside overnight. On the final day of their trip, they quickly bagged up the shoes without inspecting them.
They believe this is how the scorpion was able to travel more than 7,000 miles from the island to the family’s home.
According to SWNS, Isabel was cleaning the house about a week after they returned home when she spotted the scorpion.
“I thought, ‘oh my god, what’s that?’ I obviously wasn’t expecting it to be in the cupboard,” she told SWNS. “It was moving, it was kind of squirreling and scuttling around. You could see it was a scorpion. I put a pint glass over it, I didn’t want it running around the house. It was a bit scary.”
She also said she was happy that she found it instead of one of her children, a 2-year-old and a 6-year-old, or her cat. While this particular scorpion’s sting isn’t deadly, the stinger can inject a venom that causes a burning sensation and can be very painful.
Fortunately for the scorpion, the family was able to locate a local boy who has an interest in exotic animals who was willing to adopt it.