A Calgary man has received compensation after a scorpion dropped on his head on a recent flight.
Richard Bell told CBC News that he was eating lunch on a United Airlines flight from Houston, Texas on April 9 when the little critter fell out of the overhead bin.
He picked it out of his hair by the tail, only to be told by a fellow passenger that the creature could be dangerous.
"So I dropped it on my plate and then I went to pick it up again, and that's when it stung me. It got my nail, mostly,” he told CBC.
He flicked it onto the floor, where a flight attendant covered it with a cup. Then he crushed it with his foot, he said.
Flight attendants flushed it down the toilet, an act that later frustrated border patrol officers who wanted to figure out what kind of scorpion it was, his wife Linda Bell, who was flying with him, told the Toronto Star.
United said in a statement obtained by CNN that a doctor on the ground assured the crew during the incident that the sting wasn’t life-threatening.
Medical personnel still met the flight when it arrived in Calgary.
"It was the scariest time in my life, sitting there for that hour, watching if he’d have symptoms."
But while the victim himself stayed calm, saying his childhood on a farm prepared him for the incident, Linda said she freaked out.
"It was the scariest time in my life, sitting there for that hour, watching if he’d have symptoms," she said.
"We have two kids at home."
The airline reached out to Richard and gave him a travel credit, she told the Star.
It's unclear how the creature got on the plane, but flight-tracking site FlightAware shows that the aircraft came from Costa Rica before Houston, according to CNN.
The incident happened the same day that United passenger David Dao was dragged off a flight by police to make room for airline employees. He had far worse injuries — his lawyer said in a news conference Thursday that he suffered a concussion, a broken nose and lost two teeth.