Shock as Man Wakes Up To Discover Something Crawling On His Face

A man suffered every arachnophobic's worst nightmare while sleeping during a family vacation in Croatia.

"Bugs and critters getting inside is very common since the house is close to a small forest and quite close to the sea,"Jaka, who comes from Slovenia, told Newsweek. "But I've never even seen something like this before."

Jaka said he was fast asleep when suddenly something strange happened.

"I felt something on my face," he said. "I thought it was just a spider or maybe a smaller bug but as I swatted it away it felt much harder and heavier, making me immediately jump up from the bed."

He said he spent the next 10 minutes frantically searching around on the floor for what it was, before eventually capturing the culprit in a glass jar. It turned out Jaka had just had a close encounter with a scorpion. Fortunately, there was no sting in this tale and he came away unscathed.

Americans are no strangers to an occasional encounter with a scorpion. In 2017, a study published in the Journal of Medical Toxicology found that over the course of a 10-year period running from 2005 to 2015, there were 185,402 confirmed exposures to scorpions in the U.S.

Arizona accounted for the bulk of these (68.2 percent), with Texas (10.3 percent) and Nevada (4.2 percent) also hot spots. More than 100 scorpion encounters were reported across a further six southern states.

Jaka said he was not aware that scorpions lived in the region of Croatia where he was staying.

"I'm used to having grasshoppers, moths or maybe small spiders crawl on me but never this," he said. "I used to be terrified of spiders when I was younger but nowadays I tend to capture and remove most bugs if I can. Sure it's not pleasant to wake up to a creepy crawly on your face but, I try and capture it before I resort to using a flip flop."

Though he was relieved to discover the scorpion was "not poisonous," the picture he shared to Reddit showcasing his unwanted roommate left many feeling squeamish.

Posted under the handle u/56productions, the image of the small scorpion resting on a cushion was still enough to strike fear into the hearts of many on social media.

"Guess I'll just get out of bed. Not sleeping tonight. Or ever again," one commenter wrote.

"Thanks in advance for the nightmare you're gonna give me tonight," another said with a third adding that while this particular scorpion may not have been deadly it could have resulted in a "potentially very nasty bite."

Jaka thinks it was likely a European yellow tailed scorpion and agrees he was lucky not to get hurt.

"Getting stung on the face would've been quite unfortunate if it did happen," he said. "Safe to say I slept with one eye open for a few days after that."

Despite his own near-miss, Jaka is keen to stress that anyone visiting countries like Croatia should not be put off by his experience.

"My advice is that you shouldn't be afraid of scorpions and smaller critters, especially in Europe," he said. "They're usually harmless, especially if their pincers are larger than their tail. Although if you come from a different part of the world, make sure you Google a scorpion before trying to handle it in any way."

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