A British mother said she was horrified when she recently discovered a bag of bananas her husband had bought from a Tesco grocery store were infested with potentially deadly spiders, according to the Bristol Post.
Maria Layton opened the bag to give her young daughter a banana and, to her horror, found a massive spider web on it, the Bristol Post reported. Other fruits in the bunch has spider cocoons on them as well, she told the newspaper.
Layton took to Tesco’s Facebook page Tuesday morning to express her concern over the disconcerting discovery.
“I called Tesco three times and was told to bring it back to the store,” she wrote in the Facebook post, which included a photo of one of the bananas. “I opened the bag and chucked it in the bin before I spotted this thing.”
She then asked them if the store would like to inspect the bananas. “Should I take the bin to the store too and my fruit bowl?” she asked. “Would Tesco like to come round to check whether any baby spiders are in our house?”
A representative responded to Layton’s Facebook, assuring her she would be given a full refund and asking her for additional information about the product.
Unhappy over the response she received, the 43-year-old British mother commented back that she was “more concerned about” the infested bananas having been inside her home.
A second Tesco representative responded that she should take the item and packaging back to the store so that “a full investigation can take place with the suppliers.”
Layton told the Bristol Post she was worried that the arachnid was the Brazilian wandering spider, also known as Phoneutria. It has been named the “world’s most venomous spider” by Guinness World Records.
The type of spider found on the banana, however, has not yet been confirmed.
And as the University of California, Riverside noted on its Spider Research page, spiders found on bananas can commonly be mistaken as Phoneutria when they are typically another type of arachnid, the harmless Cupiennius spider.
Nevertheless, Layton was frightened about what she found and had hoped the grocery chain could assist her in determining whether the creature had infested her home.
“I was really concerned about the possibility of this dangerous spider and spider eggs in my house and really wanted some helpful advice on how to act,” Layton told the newspaper. “I wasn’t sure if other spiders or eggs had escaped when I ripped the bag open.”
In the end, Layton said she felt that “Tesco were a bit useless.”
