Jeff Ellis of West Linn, shows the cell phone image of the
scorpion which stung him while he was trying to sleep on a red-eye
Alaska Airlines flight on June 17 during a interview Thursday, June
30, 2011, in Portland, Ore. The Oregon man got a big surprise on a
commercial flight from Seattle to Anchorage, Alaska, when he was
stung by a scorpion while sitting in his plane seat. When he felt
something in his sleeve and tried to brush it away. He said he felt
the crawling again, looked down and saw the culprit.
PORTLAND,
Ore. — All Jeff Ellis could do was wait as
he sat terrified 30,000 feet in the air staring at the wriggling
scorpion that stung him on a flight to Alaska.
He repeated to himself that a doctor said he'd be fine —
probably.
Ellis, of Portland, Ore., first had to wait 30 minutes to see
whether he succumbed to anaphylactic shock.
"In the movies, scorpions kill people," Ellis, 55, said
Thursday. "I was just nervous, on edge, making sure that my heart
was beating normal, that I wasn't sweating."
Alaska Airlines spokeswoman Bobbie Egan said the scorpion
probably crawled on board the plane during a stop in Austin, Texas.
The plane then landed in Seattle, where Ellis boarded for a flight
to Anchorage.
About three hours into the flight, Ellis dozed off. Then, he
felt something tickling his arm.
"I felt it on my shirt-sleeve and brushed it off, I thought it
was a little spider or something," Ellis said. "Then I felt it back
on my elbow."
Just after that, Eliis felt a sting. He grabbed it with his
napkin and his girlfriend, Suzanne Foster, called a flight
attendant, who tossed the scorpion into a clear plastic bag.
The writhing arachnid terrified children seated nearby.
"Their mother told the flight attendant, 'Get that thing out of
my face,' " Ellis said.
As Ellis monitored himself for signs of a fatal allergic
reaction, emergency responders in Anchorage were told to get ready;
the flight would be landing soon.
But they had a problem, Ellis said: Scorpions aren't common in
Alaska, and the EMTs didn't know what to do.
"They had to Google it," he said.
News traveled quickly through the cabin, but Ellis said no one
panicked. He was the first to get off the plane, he said, where he
was met by a police officer.
In the end, it turned out that the doctor on the flight was
right. Ellis was OK, and all that's left of the incident is a mark
on his arm.
Egan said the airline has never had a poisonous creature on one
of its flights before, but it wasn't the first time someone found a
scorpion on a plane.
During a Southwest Airlines flight in 2009, an Arizona man was
stung while traveling from Phoenix to Indianapolis. His 10-year-old
son found the rest of the family of scorpions in the luggage
compartment over their seats.
Ellis thinks — based on photos he took of the eight-legged pest
— that he was stung by a striped bark scorpion, which is common in
Texas.
He said he is happy with the flight crew's response, and said
the airline has offered him 4,000 frequent-flier miles and two
round-trip tickets.
His return flight to Seattle, he said, was uneventful