United Airlines is in hot water again after a scorpion fell out of an overhead bin and stung a Canadian passenger on Sunday — the same day a man was forcibly removed from a United flight in Chicago.

Calgary residents Richard and Linda Bell were eating lunch on the flight from Houston, Texas, when the scorpion fell onto Richard’s head.

The couple was returning home to Alberta via Houston after spending two weeks on vacation in Mexico.

Bell felt something hit his head and reached up to grab it, said his wife.

“I was holding it by the tail,” Bell said, “and the guy next to me told me, ‘That’s a scorpion!’ I didn’t realize what it was because there are not that many of them running around Calgary.”

Bell dropped the scorpion onto the tray in front of him, and as he was trying to grab it again, the creature stung him in the thumb. He said he threw it onto the floor and stomped on it.

“It felt like a wasp sting, but with a bigger surface area. It hit my nail more than my skin,” said Bell. “I was pretty calm the whole time. I grew up on a farm and had all kinds of things happen to me.”

Linda said she felt less calm. “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.”

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The incident occurred the same day as another event that made international headlines, when a passenger was dragged off an overbooked United flight in Chicago. United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz later issued a public apology for the removal of Kentucky physician David Dao, who was dragged from his seat by police, his face bloodied.

On Bell’s flight, the scorpion was removed by flight attendants and flushed down the toilet — which proved to be a problem once the Bells began searching online to find out whether the scorpion was venomous, because they couldn’t identify exactly what it looked like.

Richard said his thumb went numb, but the symptoms didn’t worsen. A nurse on board gave him some Benadryl, Linda said.

In a statement, United Airlines said the crew consulted a MedLink physician on the ground and that medical personnel met the aircraft when it landed in Calgary. They also said they had reached out to the customer to apologize.

Linda Bell said border patrol officers also investigated the incident and were frustrated that the scorpion had been flushed away, because it could not then be identified. She is unsure where the scorpion came from, but said that the flight had arrived in Houston from Costa Rica before it flew on to Calgary.

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According to Linda, three United Airlines representatives had reached out to her husband, but it took them some time to get hold of him because he had switched seats with another passenger, and United had called the other man first.

Linda Bell said her husband flies with United often and will continue to do so, noting the airline gave him a travel credit.

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