Biosecurity staff have stopped a live, but cold, scorpion from making New Zealand its new home.
During a routine inspection last month, staff at a transitional facility in Auckland found the creature inside a refrigerated shipping container of bananas.
The container had come from Ecuador.
"The quarantine officer that was involved was able to intercept it fairly quickly… and the container afterwards went to be fumigated," a Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) spokesperson says.
"If there was anything else with the bananas, it would have been rendered non-viable."
The scorpion itself, which was around 4cm-long, was "humanely euthanised".
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