It seems the scorpion habitat has extended to hiding in planes and men’s pants!
A Vermont man survived two bites by a scorpion that crawled up his leg after finding its way onto a United Airlines flight.
David Sullivan, a 46-year-old builder from Stowe, Vermont, had been visiting his sons in San Francisco with his wife, Helena. After they boarded the second leg of their United Airlines flight to head home, he relaxed and settled in to take a nap. Shortly before the plane landed, Sullivan awoke to a strange sensation in his leg.
“My right leg felt like it was asleep, but that was isolated to one spot,” Sullivan said. “It felt like it was being jabbed with a sharp piece of plastic or something.”
Sullivan and his wife got off the plane and went to the baggage claim area to wait for their bags, and that’s when he felt a second stab of pain in his other leg. Sullivan rolled up the cuff of his pants to see what the pain was coming from, and a scorpion fell out.
“It felt like a shock, a tingly thing,” Sullivan said. “Someone screamed, ‘It’s a scorpion!’” Another passenger hurried over and stepped on the 2″-long arachnid. Sullivan gathered up the scorpion and headed to the hospital to seek medical treatment.
Dr. Stephen Leffler, director of emergency services at the Fletcher Allen Health Care hospital in Burlington, where Sullivan sought treatment, said “we don’t see many scorpion bites in Vermont.” He said that scorpion bites are rarely fatal, unless the patient is a small baby or an older person with other medical problems. In a healthy adult, a scorpion bite can cause numbness or shooting pain extending out from the bite. It can also result in flu-like symptoms, which Sullivan had the next day. “You’re much more likely to die from an allergic reaction to a bee sting,” Leffler said.
Sullivan believes the scorpion first bit him on the back of his right leg while he was sleeping, then crawled up through his crotch and down his left leg, before biting him again on the shin as he waited for his luggage.
The Sullivans think the scorpion boarded the plane in Texas. Mrs. Sullivan, in talking to officials at the United Airlines counter in the airport, was told that the plane they had boarded in Chicago had flown there from Houston. “The airlines tell you you can’t bring water or shampoo on a plane,” Mrs. Sullivan said. “All the security we go through” apparently didn’t apply to the scorpion, she said.
United spokeswoman Robin Urbanski said that airline officials are investigating the incident to see how the scorpion might have gotten on board the flight. “We’re very sorry for what happened,” she said. “Our customer safety and security is our number one priority.”
For his part, Sullivan seems unfazed by the incident. “I’ve traveled enough in tropical climates, Argentina, South Americato know about the risks from insects and animals and microorganisms. … It’s a dangerous world out there.” When a reporter asked if he had seen the recent Samuel L. Jackson movie, “Snakes on a Plane,” Sullivan said that he hasn’t. “I’m pretty selective about what I see,” Sullivan said. “Maybe I have to see it now.”
By Buzzle Staff and Agencies
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