Last Sunday, Benoit Sanscartier was stung by a scorpion hidden in his bananas purchased at Costco in Boisbriand.
“I removed the paper around the bananas and got stung by the scorpion,” explains Benoit Sanscartier who thought he had cut himself. He adds that this sting hurts “extremely”, or “twice the pain of a wasp sting”. Mr. Sanscartier quickly called 811. After waiting more than an hour, they went directly to the hospital.
It must be said that the sting of this scorpion is quite devastating and can in certain cases cause death if you have a pre-diagnosed heart disease. “That’s in the worst cases, and most of the time, what happens is precisely what happened to the gentleman, that is to say, pain and a lot of fear,” says the entomologist at the University of Montreal, Étienne Normandin, in an interview with TVA Nouvelles. Fortunately, he went to the hospital relatively quickly, so they could treat him.
This scorpion, also named the “banana scorpion”, which would have found refuge in Costco bananas comes from Guatemala, in South America. “The name is quite evocative,” he says. These are scorpions found relatively frequently in grapes or bananas imported from the south, whether in the United States or Central American countries. The cause behind this discovery would be the storage of bananas. “In these countries, they are placed in carts or large warehouses. They can sneak in and be transported here. In a few days, the scorpion can survive the cold, because they are kept in stable conditions,” says Mr. Normandin.
Benoit Sanscartier also contacted Costco for more information. “They told me they only had a protocol for employees. “It’s the first time they’ve seen that for a client,” he comments.
How did this scorpion get to Canada? The Canadian Food Inspection Agency will investigate to elucidate the causes behind this incident. Finding an insect in a fruit “happens frequently,” continues Mr. Sanscartier. However, finding a scorpion in Quebec and being stung “is very rare”, knowing that the sting “is quite devastating”.
