Mireille Ottolini from Zandvoort got the fright of her life this weekend when her daughter Lotte (21) came home from a holiday camp with a very special new pet: a baby scorpion. The animal had traveled from Corsica in a sleeping mat.
Lotte accompanied the boulder camp as a supervisor [klimmen zonder touw, red.] and discovered the animal of a few centimeters when a young contestant rolled out her sleeping mat. The girl had just returned from a holiday in Corsica.
“She texted me right away,” Mireille tells NH. “My first reaction was: ‘that beast has to go there'”, but Lotte found it all interesting. Her daughter is not easily scared and she was not impressed by this arachnid with a poisonous tail. She put the animal in a tupperware container and took it home the next day.
A video of the scorpion – NH News
“The next morning she texts me that she has taken him,” Mireille says, still in disbelief. She wants the scorpion out of her house as soon as possible at that moment, so she calls the Animal Ambulance. “He didn’t believe it at first. They thought it was a crayfish, but I clearly saw that the tail curled up.”
After Mireille sends a photo, the attitude of the animal ambulance changes. They warn her definitely not to touch the beast and come to collect it soon after. The animal ambulance then takes the scorpion to the reptile shelter in Zwanenburg, where the animal still resides.
“It happens about ten times a year”
“He just stays with us,” says Rob Dumont of the reptile shelter. Like Lotte, he reacts coolly to the find: “It happens about ten times a year that holidaymakers accidentally take such a scorpion with them. The last time was ten days ago. We already have a whole collection here.”
According to Rob, the ‘European scorpion-like’ that lives in Corsica and Italy, among other places, is not life-threatening. “A shot can make you feel sick for a while. You then suffer from dizziness, nausea and stomach cramps. That is over after a day.”
Two months without food
The scorpion is in good condition, but that doesn’t surprise Rob either. “Such a beast can survive a month or two without food.” Interested parties can pick up the animal in Zwanenburg. “For scientific research, for example.”
A month ago, an Italian tourist in Amsterdam found an emperor scorpion in her suitcase. That non-life-threatening animal should also have gone to the reptile shelter in Zwanenburg, but the animal ambulance accidentally let it escape from its box.