In what is, somehow, only the second most horrifying thing to happen to a passenger on a United Airlines flight this week, CNN reports that a scorpion fell out of one of the airline’s overhead bins on Sunday, landing on a passenger’s head, and then stinging him when he tried to remove it. “Oh my god, that’s a scorpion,” someone else loudly declared, as one does when a seemingly normal airplane suddenly transforms into a game of Pitfall. The scorpion was then grabbed by United crew, forcibly dragged into the plane’s bathroom, and re-accomodated into the toilet, where it was flushed.
The man was apparently unharmed by the sting, proving once and for all that nature’s most terrifying predators have nothing on an airport security guard armed with bad orders and an unawareness of the existence of cellphone cameras. Meanwhile, we’re suddenly seeing a new branding direction for United, as it struggles to recover in the wake of this week’s Fear Factor-esque series of abuses: nightmare hell flights, where people beat you up, toss poisonous monsters on you, and—we’re just spitballing here—maybe make all your teeth fall out, before forcing you to take a test you totally forgot to study for.