While we usually collect souvenirs and suntans from a holiday to an exotic location, this family from Chichester got something extra, a scorpion, when they got back home from their trip to Bali.
Rory and Isabel Neighbor, both of who are estate agents, were surprised to have unwillingly brought a Chinese Swimming Scorpion to their home along with their luggage.
Watch to learn more of this family’s story below!
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Video credit: Rumble
The couple had been back home for a whole week when Isabel, 33, found the scorpion near the shoe cupboard at their residence in East Broyle.
“I thought, oh my god what’s that,” she said.
“I obviously wasn’t expecting it to be in the cupboard. It was moving, it was kind of squirreling and scuttling around. You could see it was a scorpion.
“I put a pint glass over it, I didn’t want it running around the house. It was a bit scary.”
Isabel said she was lucky to have found the potentially harmful creature before their children, two-year-old Nico and six-year-old Lucas, or their pet cat could have a dangerous encounter with it.
Isabel waited for her husband to return from work and then the couple moved the scorpion to a plastic box, providing it with some leaves and a spider to feast upon, in case it felt the need of eating something.
According to the information from animalscene.ph., the Chinese Swimming Scorpion, scientifically known as Lychas mucronatus is not lethal but its sting is extremely painful.
The venom that it injects into the subject’s body can cause irritation at the site of the sting, a burning sensation, and severe pain.
According to Isabel, the seven-centimeter-long traveler accompanied them from their stay in Gili Meno.
The family was on an ‘amazing’ 11-night trip to Bali spanning over Christmas and New Year Eve and they spent a few days on the Gili Meno island as a part of their trip.
Their holiday package included feeding elephants, snorkeling with turtles, and seeing monkeys in their natural habitat.
Gili Meno is a “tiny, shady” island where the only mode of transport is horses and carts. The tourists coming to this place are warned of the abundance of scorpions on the area.
So, Rory, Isabel, and their children regularly wore beach shoes while on the island and left them out of their room at night to prevent the sand from coming in.
The morning when they had to catch the ferry from the island to Ubud, the family left in a hurry and Isabel kept the beach shoes in a plastic bag where they remained until they reached home.
Most probably, the scorpion found his way into their luggage in that window when the shoes were out for the night.
The scorpion was adopted by one of Rory’s football friends who has a taste for exotic pets and already has a collection of snakes and scorpions.
Isabel topped the story off, saying: “I was quite happy it was going to a good home.”
Replaced!