Halifax weatherman finds scorpion in bananas
HALIFAX — A weatherman says he got more than he bargained for during a recent trip to a Costco in Halifax after finding what appeared to be a live scorpion in a bag of bananas.
Nathan Coleman, a reporter for The Weather Network, said he was unloading groceries when his 11-year-old daughter spotted something squirming in a plastic bag.
Coleman said he dismissed the rustling, telling his daughter it was just a slug. He said his mother put away the bananas, and then held up the bag and saw what looked like a scorpion.
“It was as scary as it was shocking,” Coleman said in an interview. “It’s just such a strange bug.”
As a reporter, Coleman has covered his fair share of natural oddities, but he said he never expected to find a scorpion crawling amongst his groceries.
“It’s actually very surreal,” he said. “I cover all of Atlantic Canada, but I didn’t have to go very far to find this story. It was right in my kitchen.”
A video posted on The Weather Network website — which has been viewed more than 114,000 times — shows Coleman on his deck holding up a plastic bag, the squirming palm-sized scorpion inside.
Coleman said he double-bagged the arachnid and drove to the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History, where it has been jarred for observation.
He said a warehouse manager has apologized to him and he was told Costco is looking into the incident.
Coleman worried about what could have happened had the creature gotten loose around his daughter and one-year-old baby.
“Another thing that comes to mind is the danger,” he said. “I think it would be funnier if I was younger ... but I have kids and having that (scorpion) in such close proximity, we were lucky.”
Costco did not immediately return a request for comment Monday.
Coleman said he’s hoping to find out whether the scorpion is venomous and how it was able to journey thousands of kilometres.