In mail from China

German woman found scorpion in parcel: animal stung her

(Bild: stock.adobe.com/japolia)

A woman from the German state of Hesse has found a scorpion in a parcel which, according to police, stung her. A neighbor of the woman alerted the officers. When they arrived at the scene, the 25-year-old woman was already in hospital. The police officers also found the scorpion, which had already been killed. 

The incident had already occurred on October 30, said a police spokesperson. The animal had been in a parcel from an online mail order company and the scorpion had presumably been packed in China. The woman was treated at Marburg University Hospital.

Not the first animal stowaway in a parcel
The first media outlet to report on the incident was "Amal Frankfurt", a news platform for refugees. According to the report, the woman is said to have ordered from the online retailer Shein. This is not the first time that the company has made headlines because of animal cargo: it was only in October that a young British woman discovered a scorpion in a delivery.

Here you can see the scorpion in the shipment:

Dead animal was supposed to help doctors with treatment
According to the police spokesperson, the officers asked a relative to bring the dead scorpion there to enable the doctors to better assess the appropriate treatment. According to the medical report that the woman published on the Internet, she suffered swelling from the sting, among other things.

Scorpion stings are an absolute rarity in Germany
Such cases are rare in Germany, according to Andreas Stürer, clinical toxicologist and head of the Poison Information Center for Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland based at the University Hospital in Mainz. Of the 800,000 cases reported to the Poison Control Center over the past 30 years, only around 132 were scorpion stings. Most patients remained symptom-free, with some experiencing mild symptoms such as local swelling. Circulatory problems occur less frequently, but these could also be caused by the shock.

Mysterious scorpion found in Marburg apartment
It was only in August that a scorpion was discovered in an apartment in the Schröck district of Marburg. A man caught the animal and then alerted the police, who took the scorpion to an animal shelter. According to an initial assessment, it was a poisonous specimen. A sting from it would have had similar effects to that of a bee, according to the case at the time. It was initially unclear how the scorpion got into the apartment.