These vacationers returned with a stingy stowaway.
A UK family was flabbergasted after finding a scorpion in their kitchen — which they believed hitched a 6,000-mile ride back with them from their trip to Africa.
“It must have hitched a lift with my daughter,” Liz Burrows, 50, told SWNS of the venomous hitchhiker.
She, husband Ian, 52, and 18-year-old daughter Daisy had reportedly just arrived home to King’s Cliffe from Kenya when they discovered they might’ve brought back an extra souvenir.
The financial planner said she had gone to the fridge when she spotted the one-and-a-half-inch arachnid sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor with its tail shaking.
While Daisy initially thought it was a leaf, it “then became quite clear it was a scorpion,” Liz described.
“Its tail was quivering so it was still alive but it wasn’t moving much, certainly not enough to send us running out the room,” said the mother of two.
Daisy, who had recently spent a month in Kenya, recognized the scorpion from their travels, leading Liz to believe that the arachnid had hitched a ride with her daughter 6,000 miles back from the Subsaharan nation.
As Daisy had arrived home two weeks ago, it would’ve meant that the scorpion had been chilling in their house for a full fortnight.
After doing some online research, the fam deduced that the critter was a pygmy thick-tail scorpion, a “mildly venomous” species that frequently ventures inside homes — though presumably not in the UK.
“The venom is of little consequence to humans and stings, although painful, are not medically important,” the African Snakebite Institute writes.
Nonetheless, Liz said her “first instinct was to kill it or dispose of it because of the risk to my family and the dogs.”
Her husband, however, was enthralled with the find and wanted to keep it as a pet. “It’s exciting. You don’t often find a scorpion in the house,” gushed Ian, who put the accidental immigrant in a jar with holes.
Despite building the scorpion a new abode, their new family member perished shortly thereafter. “Sadly I think it’s now an ex-scorpion,” he lamented.
Meanwhile, his other half says she just hopes “it doesn’t have any other friends.”