Halifax weatherman finds scorpion in Costco bananas
HALIFAX — A Halifax-based weatherman says he got more than he bargained for during a recent Costco trip — a live scorpion in his bag of bananas.
Nathan Coleman, a reporter for The Weather Network, said he was unloading groceries on Friday when his 11-year-old daughter spotted something squirming in a plastic bag. Coleman said he dismissed the rustling until his mother put the bananas away and saw the scorpion. “It was as scary as it was shocking,” Coleman said. “It’s just such a strange bug.”
He said he double-bagged the scorpion and drove to the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History, where it was placed in alcohol and kept alongside other creatures who’ve arrived from tropical locations.
Andrew Hebda, the museum’s zoologist, said it’s the first such arrival he knows of where the museum has received a specimen from a banana shipment, but other scorpions have come into the province in fruit. He said it is likely that a few of the potentially dangerous arachnid arrive in the city each year. “We call them hitchhikers — everything from snakes to frogs to spiders,” he said.
Hebda said he’s been able to classify the migrant from Guatemala as belonging to the general class of Buthids, a large family of scorpions that have a fat tail.
Though the chances are slim the average fruit shopper will run into similar creatures, the zoologist nonetheless suggests people take a moment to run their produce under a tap. “If you get fruit from tropical areas, wash it off, as it can take off any insects and generally puts them into cold shock,” he said.
Hebda said the scorpion was capable of delivering a fairly nasty sting, though he doesn’t think it would be lethal. He said “on the positive side,” the arrival of the occasional scorpion is a sign of fewer chemicals being used on the fruit — in the past, heavy use of pesticides would have eliminated most unwanted visitors.