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It’s hard not to be bummed out when you land at home after flying back from a vacation. However, one woman got an especially miserable welcome when she arrived in Boston after spending some time in Mexico courtesy of a scorpion that stung her when she went to grab her luggage.
Most countries have laws designed to prevent people from transporting venomous creatures across international borders for fairly obvious reasons, but there’s only so much authorities can do to prevent the occasional stowaway from hitching a ride on a plane or a ship destined for another land.
That includes a number of arachnids with potentially deadly bites that have repeatedly made headlines around Europe; in 2023, a supermarket in Austria was evacuated when a Brazilian wandering spider was spotted lurking in a shipment of bananas from South America a year after a grocery store in Germany befell a similar fate courtesy of what was eventually deemed to be a largely harmless pantropical huntsman.
Now, we’ve been treated to another strange story in a similar lane thanks to what transpired at Logan International Airport in Boston over the weekend.
According to WCVB, an unidentified 40-year-old woman flew back from a trip to Mexico on Sunday evening and headed to Terminal E to retrieve her luggage at baggage claim only to get a very unexpected surprise when she was stung in the finger by a scorpion that had seemingly managed to make its way onto the same plane.
EMS workers were called to transport her to a nearby hospital for treatment, and while it doesn’t appear she was stung by one of the approximately 60 scorpion species with venom potent enough to kill a human, her condition was not initially disclosed.
Officials at Logan also declined to specify the fate of the scorpion, and it sure seems like it may have fled the scene and could still be lurking in the terminal when you consider they have not released the photos you’d expect if it had been killed or captured.
Mexico is home to more than 280 unique species of scorpion, and there are around 250,000 reported instances of people being stung there each year.
It’s very safe to assume that number is much, much lower in Boston, but there’s been at least one in 2025.