Scorpion Surprise: French Family Finds Moroccan Stowaway Under Child’s Bed

On May 26, as she was putting her children to bed, Victoria, a mother, noticed a brown stain under one of her sons’ beds. So she approaches and pushes the bed. She was greatly surprised to discover a Moroccan scorpion measuring between 5 and 7 centimeters under the bed. "There, I discover the big beast, she tells Le Parisien. A scorpion. Heart attack!" Victoria calls her husband for help. A touch on the foot allows him to see that the animal is already dead. Armed with a barbecue tong, he grabs the creature and places it on a white sheet. Despite this finding, the mother of the family expresses concerns. She calls the firefighters, but they made her understand that their intervention was not necessary, the animal being already dead; nevertheless, the fears persist. "I have seven children," the mother specifies. The scorpion was in the room of my two sons, aged 8 and 10, under one of the beds near the door. They didn’t want to sleep in it anymore."

Where does this scorpion come from? The couple had traveled to Morocco in February. "I’ve already seen some in Morocco, but not here," insists the thirtysomething. "It’s not something you see in Paris or the Paris suburbs." Did Victoria bring the animal back in her suitcases on her return from the trip? "But I wash everything at 60°C and I don’t see where it could have sneaked in," the mother wonders, assuring that "her" scorpion does not look like the ones she knows. "They are not the same. They don’t have the same color or the same pincers," she adds. Since then, the scorpion has been stored in a jar on the terrace. "I don’t want that inside. It’s dead, but you never know," the thirtysomething sighs.

The arachnid would be of a "very dangerous, even deadly" species, precisely present in North Africa, concludes Dr. Wilson Lourenço, a Franco-Brazilian arachnologist specializing in scorpions who works at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris (5th), after taking a look at the photos. "It is a scorpion of the genus Androctonus. Probably of the species A. mauritanicus, present in northern Morocco," he explains. It may have traveled in the suitcases. A type of situation "very rarely observed, but possible," adds the expert. "In France, we have some native species, but only south of the Loire. And they are all harmless," he specifies.