Stowaway scorpion hitches ride to Toronto

madeleine white/torstar news service

This scorpion hid in?Billy Shawn’s suitcase before a journey from Mexico.

New to the zoo

Shawn’s wife thinks the creature is a “yellow scorpion,” also known as a “deathstalker,” a poisonous scorpion mainly found in Africa and the Middle East — but Tom Mason has his doubts.
According to Tom Mason, curator of birds and invertebrates at the Toronto Zoo, it is illegal to keep a scorpion as a pet under city bylaws. But the zoo will gladly take it off his hands.
Shawn said he was excited at the prospect of making the creature part of the zoo’s arachnid collection.

Published: September 09, 2010 5:14 a.m.

Last modified: September 08, 2010 9:16 p.m.

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Billy Shawn was shocked when he spotted it near the wall, next to a pile of clothes waiting to be washed after a recent move from Mexico.

A brownish-yellow, eight-centimetre-long scorpion had made its way to his Park Road home in Toronto.

“I thought, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’” Shawn said.

He suspects the skinny-clawed arachnid made the journey after crawling into a suitcase as his family packed to leave.

Shawn’s wife, Nelly, is Mexican and the family had been living in Ixtapa for the past eight years. They moved to Toronto the last week of August so their three children could attend school, likely just for the year.

It is not the first run-in the family has had with a scorpion. Their three-year-old daughter was stung on the thumb about six months ago. Luckily, antivenom is fairly accessible in Mexico and the child made a full recovery, Shawn said.

But he is not so sure he could have saved his daughter this time had the potentially deadly stowaway not been found.

“In Mexico, we keep the antivenom at home,” he said. “I doubt they’d have it here.”

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