What a weird story.
"The man was preparing to return to Canada from a Costa Rican camping trip with his brother when the scorpion crawled into his bag undetected, airline officials said.
The American Airlines flight had a stopover in Miami and no one saw a sign of the scorpion – until the plane took off for Toronto.
Suddenly, the scorpion managed to crawl out of the knapsack and stung the passenger on the back of the knee, according to airline officials and passengers.
"A young man on board said he was bitten by a scorpion," said American Airlines spokesman John Hotard, adding, "he even caught the scorpion because he felt it crawling up his pants leg.""
If it crawled into his bag undetected, how do they know? And if someone saw it crawling out of the knapsack, why didn't they say something at the time? I know in these days of individualism and I'm All Right Jack we're none of us beholden to others, but basic human decency should dictate that someone speak up with "Excuse me, did you know there's a scorpion - an invertebrate animal with eight legs, belonging to the order Scorpiones in the class Arachnida - about to crawl up your trouser leg?".
"Although the scorpion was killed during its capture, animal control officials that attended the scene identified it as a non-lethal type of scorpion and said the man should recover from the sting."
Isn't that usually the way with non-lethal stings?
I'm dismayed that the man's not going to be charged. As Guantanamo Bay commander Read Admiral Harry Harris said when some inmates committed suicide, ""They are smart. They are creative, they are committed. They have no regard for life, either ours or their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us." I have no doubt that this man deliberately got himself stung as an act of terror, and he should immediately forfeit all human rights. He's Canadian, for a start, so he probably wants to overthrow the US by selling its old people affordable medication.
R