Warning: There Are Scorpions In The Walmart Produce Department
12-year-old Megan Templeton was shopping with her father for some watermelons and hamburgers for their Memorial Day cook-out when she was stung by a stowaway scorpion that had made a home in the produce section of her local Walmart.
From the Charleston Daily Mail:
The Milton Middle School student jerked her hand out of the produce box to find a stinger in her finger and a tan, 1-inch-long creature still attached, William said.
The girl turned to her father and said something he at first didn't believe.
"She said a scorpion stung her on the finger," William, 36, said. "I didn't believe her at first, but then I saw it run underneath (the box)."
William said he immediately called his wife, Paula, who is a paramedic, and told her what had happened.
Paula drove to the store, picked up Megan and rushed her to nearby Cabell-Huntington Hospital.
William said before his wife had even arrived, Wal-Mart employees were on the scene and helped scoop up the exotic arachnid so it could be taken to the hospital for identification purposes.
William said he also peeled a sticker off a watermelon showing the shipment was from Mexico, which he hoped could help hospital workers treat his daughter.
The sting was harmless, but it caused a stir at the West Virginia hospital where Megan was treated. No one had ever seen a scorpion sting before. "They had to look it up on the Internet because it is so unusual in the area," Megan's father said. "Everybody came down to look at it." Walmart says they'll be checking that watermelon shipment for more scorpions-- just in case.
12-year-old W.Va. girl gets scorpion bite in the produce department [Charleston Daily Mail]
(Photo: babasteve )
Attention, Walmart shoppers! This ad is for you! Woo hoo!
Post a comment
Comments:
I know somehow, people will find a way to blame wal-mart. This is nothing new. Shit like this happens and it is NO ONES fault. The good news is that at least the little girl is ok.
Free scorpion with every purchase! People complain about everything.
Its pretty common knowledge (maybe not to a 12 year old) that fruit imports can contain exotic critters, even if they arent in the packaging i know that some species lay eggs inside fruits. Yes surprising it doesnt happen often, but its hardly anyones fault, just happened that Megan was in that unfortunate percentage!
This is one of the downsides to globalization. It's a great thing to be able to get produce way out of the local season. But, at the same time, the long-distance shipping sometimes contains unintended products as well. Consider Zebra Mollusks and Crazy Ants.
This could have easily been Wholefoods, Safeway, Publix or any other grocery store. Heck, even many "farm stands" are selling food from a long distance -- you folks in Pennsylvania didn't really think it's corn season yet, did you?
@ghank: Safeway, produce department, bananas, middle of winter in Canada still somehow equal black widow spider.
Every once in a while there's a local news story about somebody finding a black widow spider inside a bunch of grapes or other produce. Frankly I'm not surprised that scorpions would stow away in this manner as well. As snoop-blog points out this really isn't Walmarts fault. It could happen to just about anybody in any store where produce is imported.
I have to agree with snoop-blog - at least, I myself prefer an occasional bug in my fruit to a glossy, sterile-gleaming coat of wax and pesticides that definitely take 'healthy' out of fruit.
Off on a tangent, my grandfather's rule when shopping for fruit on farmers' markets: Always look for the vendor whose produce has an occasional 'bad apple' or a worm-hole...
I used to work in a product department, and we used to get all sorts of scary "hitchhikers" in boxes of produce. Giant spiders and scorpions in the bananas, weird looking things from Asia in the lychee nuts, "walking stick" insects lots of the boxes from central america.... most would be dead from being gassed at the border, but every once in a while a live one would get through...
It sounds like walmart handled the situation well.
Couple of years ago, there was a local story where poisonous spiders were found in grape shipments all over the country. No one was hurt, and I'm glad that long winters give 0% chance of survival to these critters.
Another reason Wal-Mart is evil. Scorpions stinging children, soon this will be a normal occurance at Wal-Mart. People need to make a decision to stay away from this evil corporation before someone gets killed.
Damn! Now I actually WANT to go to WallyWorld to try to get me a pet scorpion!
Walmart's just too cheap to spring for full-cargo radiation cleansing...
I might prefer to be stung by a Scorpion than to have one rock me like a hurricane.
"They had to look it up on the Internet because it is so unusual in the area,"
Please god tell me they at least used a medical site and didn't just type in "brown scorpion" into wikipedia...
I used to work at a supermarket and one day in a box of bananas we found a black widow (dead. They usually gas the fruit during shipment for that reason).We kept her in a jar as a trophy.
Another day someone opened a box of something (i forget what it was) and found a North American Bear Spider on her brood of eggs. She was alive and none to happy about being woken up...
The most interesting things I've found while working in a produce department were a local tree frog inside a box of local organic salad mix, and a slightly duct-taped knife with a four or five inch blade. The knife was in a banana box.
What is a 12-year old doing touching all the watermelons? Keep your hands off my scorpion fruit, missy.
Blame the customer FTW! :)
black widow spiders are native to southern ontario
i use to see them all the time before moving north
While Wifey and I were honeymooning in Belize, I was stung twice by a scorpion. It was a little scary, even for me as a grown adult. Fortunately, it was not a poisonous variety, but my mouth was numb (like I had gotten novocaine from the dentist) for about 18 hours and the sting area was very painful for a couple days.
A beautiful bunch a'ripe banana
Hide thee Deadly black tarantula
IphtashuFitz: "As snoop-blog points out this really isn't Walmarts fault. It could happen to just about anybody in any store where produce is imported."
As IphtashuFitz points out, YOU AREN'T SAFE ANYWHERE!
I don't know about West Virginia, but there are scorpians in the southeast. My friend's mother was stung by one in South Carolina. Are they really that "exotic" in WV?
After finding a scorpion crawling across my face in the middle of the night in Oklahoma many years ago, I learned from an entomologist that nearly every state in the U.S. has native scorpions, with only 3 or 4 exceptions.
I'm glad the girl in ok. Bet that was scary for a few hours though. Wal-Mart not to blame here, it was a rare accident. I wonder if the Scorpion sang "Rock You Like A Hurricane" for them...
I saw "west virginia" and "walmart" and it sort of threw me into a mental picture of a backwoods hospital with a Tandy 486 logged into wikipedia. Is that bad?
Scorpions in my watermelon? It's more likely than you think.
Since when are scorpions "exotic"? Where I live everyone checks their shoes and clothing before putting them on. Also their beds before getting in. Actually there aren't as many here as there used to be. One theory is that the fire ants ran them off. Guess they moved to West Virginia. And they feel right at home in Wal-Mart.
All this talk about stowaway spiders and scorpions has my skin crawling. I love fresh produce, but I'm afraid I'll be a little jumpy when I go to the grocery store tonight.
Someone work with this...the Scorpions album is called "Virgin Killers." I haven't had my coffee yet. Oh yeah, and after these bug-produce stories, I'm never buying produce again.
Not surprising -- much of northern Mexico and southwest Texas has scorpions in abundance, and there is major watermelon production in those areas. Interestingly it's pretty well known that citrus groves seem to breed scorpions in abundance. The stories are notorious about scorpion problems in Phoenix and in Florida in locations where orange groves have been torn down and replaced with apartments and houses. I'm not sure why that is, but I'd be careful around the oranges and limes too.
"was it a big scorpion? good, when it comes to Scorpion the bigger the better." - Dr. Jones
Jumping spiders are the norm here in South Texas. Fun to watch, but for the phobias, not fun at all. These little fellows are VERY brave and quite friendly.
I knew of one phobic gal that had one land her nose, playing Banzai Buggy with her. I can imagine the look on her face as her eyes crossed, the little guy peering back at her saying, "Hi! Marry me?".
@heavylee-again ("Fortunately, it was not a poisonous variety, but my mouth was numb"): Umm, of course it was poisonous -- where else do you think the neurotoxic symptoms came from?
Not a big bug fan. I'd probably stand there screaming and pointing until they had to send the men in the white coats to take me away.
But that's just me.
I was impressed that the employees thought quickly so they could capture the scorpion so more research could be done for the treatment of that 12 year old girl!! Kudos Walmart!! Fast thinking on the dad's part too! Kudos Dad!! Because of alot of fast thinking people this story has a happy ending! I have children who enjoy shopping for produce with me as well, we have sortof a race to see who can pick the best watermelon based on the what sound it makes when you tap the watermelon, and how many bee sting marks are on the rind, after reading this story we will have to make some changes! :(
@timmus: Umm, heavylee was clearly using "poisonous" in the common-English "kill-you-dead" sense and not the nitpicky clinical sense you're insisting on. Language usage changes with context. Try to keep up.
you guys would be suprised to know what comes in the boxes of most dehydrated vegetables (basically everything that is inside ramen noodles, or tv dinners). I used to have to sift out the bugs after the boxes went to some kind of radiation treatment. Stay away from dehydrated cilantro and parsley!
I used to be a supermarket produce lackey too, and I saw lots of interesting things: muddy lettuce, bugs, a piece of a wooden fence post in a 50-pound burlap bag of roasted peanuts. The horrors of fresh produce!
I am the Scorpion King! All bow down before me!
Bugs and insects hide in everything. Finding bugs in produce is hardly just a Walmart problem. There is a reason why U.S. Customs bans people from bringing in various types of plants, produce and other items that may harbor creatures.
@heavylee-again: That means it was poisonous.
@Kajj: I've never heard anybody use the word "poisonous" exclusively in the "kill you" sense. Try to keep up.
Bonus protein!
@graymulligan: This is the type of comment that is going to lead to me buying a new monitor for work. (Giving up the coffee isn't an option).
I used to work in a produce department, and some of the bugs that came in the banana boxes looked like they came out of a horror movie. I'm thankful that I live in Canada where the cold winters prevent these creatures from surviving.