An Auckland mother has described the moment her husband found a live scorpion crawling in her bathroom and picked it up.
Food and travel writer Anna King Shahab told the Herald thehitchhiking critter, spotted on Monday in her central Auckland home, was first thought to be a “piece of fluff”.
But her husband was in for a shock.
“He was in the bathroom, and he saw something on the floor that looked like a piece of fluff.
“That’s when I heard him call out to me, ‘I’ve just found something that you would never see in New Zealand. It looks like a scorpion’.”
King Shahab said she first thought her husband’s claim was “rubbish”, but upon a closer look, questioned whether it was true.
The scorpion was curled up and the size of a small fly.
“I thought, ‘Hang on a minute, this can’t be a scorpion. There must be something that lives here that looks similar to a scorpion’,” she said.
After an initial Google search, she wondered if it was a pseudoscorpion – another arachnid that resembles a scorpion – but ruled this out because of its characteristics.
“I don’t think either of us was particularly scared, but one of our kids was at home, and of course she had a bit of a freak out,” King Shahab said.
After putting a jar over the critter, the family called the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), which advised them to wrap it in a piece of tin foil and put it in the freezer.
Biosecurity staff then searched the bathroom with a special black light – because scorpions glow under UV – to make sure there were no others.
After taking a sample of the creature, MPI confirmed yesterday it was a scorpion that likely originated from Fiji.
Unanswered questions remain
King Shahab still had unanswered questions about how the scorpion hitched a ride and came to be residing in her house.
She said her last arrival in New Zealand was about a month ago from a work trip to Bali. About a month before that she had been on a work trip to Fiji.
If it was from Fiji, she said the scorpion had potentially survived more than two months in her home undetected.
King Shahab said she was a “conscious packer” who always shook out her clothes and scrubbed her shoes, so she was surprised by the find.
“I always repack my luggage ... take everything out, I shake it, I roll it, pack it back in all neat and tidy,” she said.
King Shahab said she did this in case any plant matter was lingering in her bag, but a scorpion never crossed her mind.
She now wondered if scorpions made the trip to New Zealand more often than people thought.
“I think when people think scorpion, they think something the size of a giant wētā, but this was tiny. So it would very easily be missed.”
“It’s definitely making me think ... that suitcase that I’ve been using, I should probably give it a water blast or something around the wheels.”
Scorpion confirmed
Yesterday, MPI said the creature was about 1.5cm and in “very poor condition”, which indicated it would not have survived much longer.
“Because it is still in the nymph stage, we need to carry out further testing to determine the exact species,” Biosecurity New Zealand’s manager for plant health incursion investigation, Dr Carolyn Bleach, said.
There had been no signs of any other scorpions, which were typically lone hitchhikers.
Bleach said they could survive for many months while hidden away without food.
MPI said that since 2018, there had been 10 scorpion detections on our shores.
Five were live and five were dead. The findings were made across New Zealand, mostly in Auckland and Wellington.
The ministry said most were linked to overseas travel or imported goods, including luggage, clothing, produce and freight.
MPI manager biosecurity surveillance Nick Ward earlier told the Herald the “hitchhiker pests” were considered a low biosecurity risk.
“Most scorpion species have very specific habitat and climate requirements, often consistently warm, dry environments, which means they can’t easily survive in cooler, wetter climates,” Ward said.