An unpleasant surprise. A Canadian was stung by a scorpion this Sunday, March 24, in his own home, in Laval, a town on the outskirts of Montreal, reports Le Parisien. An insect taken straight from the bunch of bananas he had just bought at the Costco supermarket.
Benoît Sanscartier was stung while undoing the packaging surrounding the fruit, around 3:00 p.m.
“I thought I had cut myself on the packaging, but then I saw the scorpion on the counter” in the kitchen, he explains on the set of TVA Nouvelles. “The scorpion was alive.”
He explains that he felt “an intense burning.” “It was really very painful,” she adds, noting that it is twice as painful as a wasp sting.
Benoît Sanscartier rushed to ask for help, but with no response, he ran to the hospital.
Bananas imported from Guatemala
Nicknamed the “banana scorpion”, this animal is found in fruits imported “from the southern United States or Central America”, such as bananas or grapes, declares Étienne Normandin, an entomologist at the University of Montreal, in TVA Nouvelles.
In this case, the bananas purchased by Benoît Sanscartier came from Guatemala.
“In this countries, [les fruits] They are placed in carts or in large warehouses. [Les scorpions] can invade and be transported here. In a few days, scorpions can survive the cold because they are kept in stable conditions,” says Étienne Normandin.
Sylvain Charlebois, a university agri-food specialist at Dalhousie University, adds that these situations remain rare and that the Canadian system does everything it can to avoid them.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency will therefore carry out an investigation to elucidate the causes of this incident and understand, in particular, how this scorpion was able to escape controls.
Benoît Sanscartier contacted the Coscto supermarket after his mishap. “They told me they only had a protocol for employees. This is the first time they’ve seen that for a customer,” he says.
Source: BFM TV
