Scorpion Lurks in Shopping
For some people, this would be the ultimate nightmare.
Never mind a spider in the bath or a cockroach scuttling across the floor.
What about a live SCORPION in the shopping?
Yet, incredibly, that's what the Collins family of Helensburgh
discovered after a trip to the supermarket.
And it only came to light when nine-year-old Saul Collins was about to
take a bite out of a kiwi fruit after the shopping trip.
For the eight-legged beastie with a sting in its tail was sitting on
the piece of fruit he hand in his hand.
Saul told the Advertiser: "I was really frightened. It was a bit of a
shock because you don't really expect to see something like that."
The Rhu Primary pupil discovered the dark-coloured scorpion — which
was only a few inches long from pincers to tail — on Sunday evening.
His mum Liz bought the punnet of kiwis, along with bananas and other
fruit, from ASDA in Clydebank.
She said: "I actually thought it was dead at first. I put it in a
tupeware container, then I noticed it was moving and realised it was
still alive.
"I think it must have been a baby because it was not quite the size of
my thumb.
"It looked fairly harmless but I wouldn't want to let it crawl up my arm."
Saul's six-year-old sister Amber and four-year-old brother Reuben were
keen to keep the unlikely pet and even named him Scorpi.
Liz added: "Amber was over the moon about it. She wanted to bring it
to school. The children told all their friends and there was a lot of
excitement over it. They were all coming over to the house to see it.
It was like a petting zoo."
Saul added: "I'm still a bit scared of it but my sister really likes
it. She wants to keep it. I'm getting used to it now so I guess I'm
going to be a bit sad to see it go."
ASDA bosses visited the family at their Helensburgh home on Tuesday to
collect Scorpi.
Liz said: "ASDA are taking it pretty seriously. They have a guy coming
up from Leeds who is going to take it away for tests to find out where
it has come from and decide what to do with it."
A spokesman for the supermarket giant said the creature would be taken
to an independent lab for analysis.
He added: "The situation is that a customer purchased kiwi fruit and
found the scorpion upon returning to her home. We are now going to
take it to an independent lab to find out what species it is.
"At this stage we do not know what it is, where it came from or how
this happened. It's definitely a rare occurrence but this sort of
thing can happen. We want to apologise to the customer for any
inconvenience this has caused."
ASDA have promised to let the Advertiser know as soon as the lab
results come in.
Helensburgh Advertiser: 13th March 2008
