A mum had a surprise when loads of tiny spiders emerged from a banana she had bought from Waitrose. Mum-of-three Michelle returned home from her shop and unpacked her groceries.
When she got to the bananas, she spotted a blister-type mark on one of them. Unwrapping them from their plastic packaging, she soon saw that the mark was a spiders' nest when she saw a tiny beastie crawl out.
She alerted her husband, Martin, and they put the bananas in the sinks. He opened up the nest and what appeared to be "hundreds" of baby spiders crawled out.
Speaking to Edinburgh Live, Michelle said: "I bought them from Waitrose, Morningside, last Monday and noticed when I took them out of the wrapper that there was something odd. I thought finding spider's nests on shop-bought fruit was a urban myth but then I took a photo and zoomed in, you could see a spider crawling out!
She said that she was worried they were the poisonous Brazilian Wandering Spider: "My husband opened the nest out and hundreds and hundreds of spiders came out. When I looked online to see what they might be, it was all horror stories, sounding frightening."
"I’m so glad that I took the bananas out of the plastic, if I had left them in and my son had opened it the next day I have no doubt that all those spiders would have hatched and gone everywhere - which doesn’t bear thinking about. I’m unsure if these were harmful or not, but they have put me off buying bananas for now. I’ve had a dream that the mother was in the pack and escaped. Afterwards I felt itchy all over!"
She quickly phoned Waitrose customer service. Michelle added: "It sounded a young guy [on the phone]. He had never heard of anything like it before. He was very polite though."
The mum-of-three explained that she chucked the fruit away and poured bleach and hot water down the sink to get rid of the spiders. Since sharing her experience with her friends, one suggested she should have put the bananas in the fridge as a way to kill the nest. Another reassured her they wouldn't have been poisonous.
Michelle said that, either way, she's not wanting any bananas in her house for a while and hasn't been back to the Waitrose store in Morningside since.
A Waitrose spokesperson said: "We’re so sorry to hear about this incident happening and we’re urgently investigating this with our supplier to make sure that this doesn't happen again."
