Posted on 05/12/2017 10:42:01 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Just weeks after a giant bunny mysteriously died in the cargo hold of a United Airlines flight, the airline was plagued with yet another animal-related fiasco. A United flight from Houston to Ecuador was delayed for more than three hours Friday after a scorpion "emerged from a customer's clothing," United said in a statement.
United confirmed that the passenger was not stung. Paramedics arrived at the gate to examine the customer, and United said he "declined further treatment." "[A]s a precaution, a new aircraft was arranged," United said.
This is the second time in a month that United Airlines has had to deal with a scorpion aboard one of its planes. In April, a man on a flight from Houston to Calgary was stung by a scorpion that fell out of an overhead bin. "My husband felt something in his hair. He grabbed it out of his hair and it fell onto his dinner table. As he was grabbing it by the tail it stung him," the man's wife said. A flight attendant apparently flushed the scorpion down the airplane toilet.
That scorpion incident happened on the same day that a seated customer was forcefully removed from an overbooked flight, sparking international outrage. A month before that, United caught flak after refusing to let two girls wearing leggings board a flight because of its dress code for its employees and their guests.
Spiderman?
I live in the Houston area, and scorpions are not common here. When you get out of the cities and into rural areas, they do start to show up. These scorpions are probably hitching rides on people from those outlying areas or third-worlders.
Was the scorpion improperly dressed?
Did it not have a boarding pass?
At least they didn't beat it up and pull it off the plane in handcuffs.
Got by the TSA?
How do you know that?
We do know that the poor critter was probly waterboarded!
Shame!
I didn’t even know they were still touring.
“I didn’t even know they were still touring.”
They’re flying the friendly winds of change!
” A flight attendant apparently flushed the scorpion down the airplane toilet. “
Oh the humanity! Wait till the scorpion’s lawyers and PETA are done with United. That blue water in the toilet is hell on the scorpion’s complexion.
It took them several hrs to find a non-girly man with a shoe.
Smuggling.
Someone got busted for trying to smuggle spiders out of mexico in fake super Nintendo cartridges recently.
Okay. One of my daughters has a house in Austin (wooded area), and has to chase scorpions off her deck (as well as tarantulas which are a lesser concern). When I last visited, a tarantula walked around my feet in the driveway, which was interesting. If it was a scorpion, I would have jumped away.
This may be a good opportunity to ask a question about a puzzling recurring event...
Although I live in the Sacramento, CA area, I live directly under a flyway for air traffic headed generally east from the greater San Francisco area major airports.
A couple of times each year a small area of my backyard lawn is covered by an "oily-appearing" film that look like raindrops, but takes days to "evaporate." My educated guess is anti-icing material from overhead air traffic.
or heaven forbid, some other stuff.
Thoughts from the airline or other aviation folks?
Can't say I ever looked for scorpions or other critter cadavers.
“As he was grabbing it by the tail it stung him”
As someone who lives in a rural, wooded area where scorpions and other such critters are common, I just have to ask-what kind of idiot does that? That is a special kind of stupid...
My late step-daughter had a house in San Marcos (fairly near Austin) that was on a country road in a sparsely populated area. While sitting outside on her porch, scorpions were a common sight. I suppose that the areas outside Houston in wooded areas, like The Woodlands probably have their share as well. I have never seen one in Houston proper or in the Sugar Land area where I live.
When you want to fly in the worst kind of way, fly United.
That is great! Now we have to deal with Illegal Alien Spiders
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