Air Travel Finds a New and Inventive Way to Be Horrible as a Traveler Gets Stung by a Scorpion at the Airport. In Boston.
One aspect of living in Massachusetts that helps make life somewhat tolerable is that there's not much in the way of nature around here that will kill you. Granted, there are about four solid months where the entire world outside your house is dark and cold and hurts every square inch of exposed flesh. But even a sever blizzard won't end you if take common sense precautions.
The scariest animals we have are black bears, and even they're pretty much big dogs that will go back to their bear holes once they've finished dumpster diving. But we're not plagued by the deadly critters other parts of North America have to deal with. Poisonous snakes. Mountain lions. Grizzlies. Sasquatch. And we don't have to worry about checking our shoes to make sure a scorpion didn't crawl in there in the night like you hear about in the Southwest. Even those murderous little land lobsters can't hack it up here. So that's a win for us Massholes.
Unless, that is, you just flew from a place that does have them. Which is exactly how one lady at Logan just got attacked:
Source - An apparent scorpion at the Boston airport reportedly stung a woman who was arriving in Terminal E on Sunday, according to Massachusetts State Police.
The woman in her 40s was stung while she was collecting her bags in the primarily international terminal, according to reports.
She was transported to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. ...
Symptoms from scorpion stings — such as burning at the sting site, drooling. muscle twitches, abdominal pain and cramps, trouble breathing, and more — usually subside within 48 hours, although stings from a bark scorpion can be life-threatening, the CDC says.
Officials did not have any further information on if the scorpion has been located.
Great. Just fecking great. Like air travel isn't already the one part of modern life that not only hasn't gotten better, it's gotten much, much worse by the day for decades now. Between flights being overbooked, the delays, the cramped seats, cheap or non-existent food, the Emotional Support animals, people taking their shoes off or just otherwise being insane. Not to mention Jack Jones:
It's less like the elegant, sophisticated travel option you see in old movies and it's more like a city bus with wings. As the great Dennis Miller once put it, air travel sucks so much now that you don't even hear about hijackings any more. That terrorists are saying "Look, I'm still down with the cause. But there's no way I'm going through all that horseshit just to make a point."
And now, we can add scorpion stings. Burning. Drooling. Muscle twitches. Abdominal pains and cramps. Trouble breathing. And if they're not life-threatening, then they're the only part of flying now that isn't.
Oh, and nice little touch at the end there. Officials don't know whether the scorpion in question has been found or not. I'm no Massport official or State Trooper, but doesn't anybody think it's worth looking into? There's a stinging monstrous bug with a taste for human flesh running around the international terminal. Shouldn't somebody be out looking for it? Can't we send for the scorpion-sniffing dogs? Start a sweep with our most advanced, state-of-the-are scorpion detection equipment? Do what they'd do in a movie and bring in the world's foremost scorpion expert to get inside this little arachnid's head, think like he thinks, and figure out where he could be hiding?
For all we know this thing could be a she and already having babies or laying eggs or however they reproduce. Terminal E could be overrun with the poisonous bastards any day now. Crawling through the X-ray machines and mutating into who knows what.
This is really hitting home for me because I have to fly next week, and I hate it enough without having one of the things we're not supposed to worry about up here to, well … worry about. I haven't even packed yet and I've already had it with these muthafuckin' scorpions on these muthafuckin' planes.