Online shopping can deliver all sorts of surprises.
Will your new clothes look and feel as they seemed when you saw them on a screen? Or does it come packed with a live scorpion?
Sofia Alonso-Mossinger, 18, thought she’d found a toy when opening a bag of boots she’d bought from fast-fashion firm Shein. Then it moved, BBC reported.
‘I unzipped the outer packaging and saw something move and was like, what’s this?’, the electrical and electronic engineering student said.
‘I thought I was dreaming. I feel like I am all right with spiders and things but it was scary being in my room with a random scorpion.’
Sofia’s flatmate Phoebe Hunt, 18, rushed from her room at the sound of screaming, only to find Sofia with the live scorpion.
Phoebe said: ‘At first, I’ll be honest, I said we should kill it and then everyone pointed out that wasn’t the most humane thing so we scooped it up and put it in a Tupperware.’
Another flatmate, zoology student Oliver James, used kitchen tongs to put the scorpion in a plastic container, where they treated it to water on a towel and a shelter made of card.
He described not knowing how dangerous to it was as ‘a bit nerve-wracking’.
Found across all major landmasses except Greenland and Antarctica, scorpions kill thousands each year with their venomous sting, but this is from just 25 of the 2,500 species. They’re not native to northern Europe.
Fortunately for these students, they weren’t at risk, as they found after contacting the National Centre for Reptile Welfare (NCRW).
Such calls are surprisingly common for the charity due to the frequency of stowaways, according to its spokesperson Chris Newman.
This particular scorpion, commonly known as Chinese scorpion – or Olivierus martensii – has a ‘medically significant sting’.
Mr Newman described it as ‘potentially life threatening but an average adult would just have a really bad day’.
With no sting on the scorpion’s tail, Sofia can rest assured that this is just ‘a funny story… but it was pretty scary at the time’.
A spokesperson for Shein said: ‘After receiving the feedback, we immediately conducted an internal investigation.
‘Our teams on the ground have checked the shipment packing process and carried out an inspection of the goods in our warehouse and have confirmed that all standard operating processes have been adhered to.’
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