Schoolgirl brings home live scorpion from holiday
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An eight-year-old girl brought back a deadly scorpion from her holiday - and it lived in her house for a month before being discovered in her bedroom.
Mary Henderson from Dalkeith, Midlothian, found the scorpion weeks after she and her family returned from a holiday at the British Virgin Islands.
The stowaway scorpion, which has been named Stavros by the family, is believed to have hidden in a shell Mary picked up from a beach while on holiday.
Mary's mum, Alice, 40, told local newspaper The Scotsman: "Mary came down in the morning when she was getting ready for school and said she had found a scorpion... we went to her bedroom and checked we saw it just lying there on the floor.
"I scooped it up into a container and it was only afterwards we thought, 'that might have been poisonous'.
The species Stavros belongs to is yet to be identified, but it's thought the scorpion could be a heteronebo yntemai or a Puerto Rican Dwarf Scorpion. Like all scorpions, this species is venomous.
After scuttling across the globe, Stavros has now taken up residence at Edinburgh Butterfly and Insect World.
General manager, Andrew McDonald, told The Scotsman: "He's a fairly shy fellow and prefers to be left on his own in his own tank, but he's settling in nicely"
Talk about having a sting in your holiday tales...
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