A UK college student thought she was dreaming when she found a poisonous Chinese scorpion crawling around her fast fashion package.
Sofia Alonso-Mossinger was opening her bag of new boots from Shein, a China-based retailer, when she spotted what she thought was a free gift.
"I unzipped the outer packaging and saw something move and was like, what's this?," Alonso-Mossinger told the BBC. "I thought it was a toy, and then it moved."
When she realized it was a living scorpion, the quick-thinking University of Bristol student zipped the bag back up and took it out of her room while screaming.
"I thought I was dreaming," she said. "I feel like I am all right with spiders and things but it was scary being in my room with a random scorpion."
Her roommate initially wanted to kill it, but students on the floor agreed that would be inhumane. Instead, a student studying zoology used kitchen tongs to place the poisonous arachnid in a plastic container with a water-soaked towel, which the scorpion happily drank.
The students told the BBC they were worried because they didn't know how poisonous the scorpion was, so they called the National Centre for Reptile Welfare, which sent over an expert within hours.
NCRW Chief Executive Chris Newman said the scorpion's sting would be "medically significant... potentially life threatening but an average adult would just have a really bad day." He added this was the second such incident they had in under a month, which he called "quite worrying."
Shein said in a statement they conducted an immediate investigation but had no leads.
"Our teams on the ground have checked the shipment packing process and carried out an inspection of the goods in our warehouse and have confirmed that all standard operating processes have been adhered to."
