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| Black widow spider. Photo: Ian Waldie, Getty Images. |
Toronto resident Brett James was reaching into his refrigerator to grab his wife a snack when he found a black widow spider lurking under the bag of grapes he'd purchased at the local Whole Foods Market, the Toronto Star reports. He thinks the poisonous spider came in with the grapes.
"When I lifted the bag, the spider was underneath, just sitting on top of another bag in the refrigerator," James tells Slashfood. "I wasn't sure exactly what it was, and I had heard stories before, so something was in the back of my head that it could be serious."
He lifted the spider out of the fridge on a paper towel and put it in a plastic container. After poking around on the Internet, he said he identified it as a black widow, a spider whose venom can cause muscle cramps, tremor and chest pain.
An entomologist later identified it as one that had likely came from California in the grapes, James says.
"I wasn't shocked initially, but then when I realized what it was, there was a little bit of thankfulness that nobody had been bitten," he says. "I'm glad it was me that found it, because it might have been a little more traumatic if it had been anybody else."
Whole Foods tells Slashfood that while it's rare to find pests -- including poisonous spiders -- in its produce, it does happen. However, in the last 651,000 boxes of grapes that the company has distributed to its stores, spokeswoman Kate Kalotz says only three spiders were found.
"With any product that comes from the field, there is potential that it will have an attraction for any sort of insect," she says.
Tom Prentice, staff research associate at UC Riverside's Department of Entomology, tells Slashfood that finding a black widow in packaged food is not something consumers need to worry about.
"Anything is possible, but we get very few reports of widow spiders coming from food products or building webs in food products. They're not a stable environment for one thing. They ripen. They fall," Prentice says. "So it's not the kind of place that a widow would use for building a web."
"It's uncommon for them to be in food like that," he says. "People just freak when it comes to spiders, and they've got a very undeserved reputation."
James hopes to donate the spider to a zoo.
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10-09-2009 @1:38AM Zhenya said... Whether it is a black widow or a red backed spider, Australia is just entering their spring and leaving their winter...no grapes there right now. I live in Sonoma Calif. where wine grapes are being harvested now. The table grapes in Calif are in the central valley and Fresno area, also being harvested. The grapes are from California as "Whole Paycheck" said they were. The spider could be a red backed spider if it crawled off of tangelos from Australia (lots os Australian tangelos in Calif markets right now) or more likely the photo is wrong.( or it got a little shook up in the last earthquake)
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10-09-2009 @2:02AM Douggieboy2001 said... Spiders are not insects; they are arachnids. While entomologists specialize in the study of insects, most are usually familiar with the characteristics of spiders.
There are but a handful of variant species of "black widow" spiders, so called because the smaller male is at grave risk of being eaten during mating. Other examples of cannibalistic sex include the preying mantis, and a few species of octopus.
While fatalities are unusual from a single bite, the black widow will certainly send you to the hospital; the brown recluse spider's venom is more deadly. The black widow uses neurotoxin, while the recluse injects a tissue destroying venom. Measured by volume of poison injected, the black widow ranges from 50 to 250 times potentiality of rattlesnake venom; while the brown recluse is capable of delivering only a few micrograms, its toxicity can be 35,000 times more potent than that of a rattlesnake's bite.
The African black mamba snake, and its Australian cousin, are often referred to as the "cigarette snakes." This means you have time enough from the bite, unto death, to smoke one butt. Most people don't even get to finish their last smoke....
A few species of sea snakes, and an innocent looking little green tree viper of South American jungle origin, possess the deadliest natural toxins known to man. Get kissed by one of these nasty things and you're history in 20 seconds or less. Only a handful of modern chemical weapons are capable of killing this quickly, though we have succeeding in reducing time from exposure to death down to a range of 5-8 seconds.
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10-09-2009 @2:19AM salsagirl said... I live in Burbank, CA. I see Black Widow all the time. They are ugly, scary, and very fast. Two weeks ago, I found a white sack outside my house. When I messed with it, an huge Black widow crawled over it, and sat over it. I killed the spider and it's eggs. I hate them!
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10-17-2009 @5:35AM alias said... Donate the spider to a Zoo? Give me a break. Donate it to the floor so the bottom of your heel can hit the top of the spider. It is after all a spider, we have more than enough of them out here in the western states. There is not going to be any chance of endangering them by giving them a penalizing squishing for showing up in places where they do not belong. If you donate it to the zoo then some one is going to have to find a place for the thing to live, appoint a caretaker, feed it, supply veterinary care and that is costly in a recession, really maybe it just isn't worth the bother.
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10-09-2009 @3:38AM Terri said... **grammar** ;)
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10-09-2009 @3:40AM Terri said... **grammar**
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10-10-2009 @9:03AM JV said... I used to work in a grocery store produce dept. and I found spiders in organic as well as regular grapes(not to mention other types of produce). So it is not uncommon to come across spiders or other insects... time to get over it :)
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10-09-2009 @3:44AM Jen said... I live in San Diego, Ca. Black Widows are all over here! I spray the front of my house and 7-8 run from under the edges. They aren't as scarey as a Banana spider! ACK!
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10-09-2009 @4:21AM Maria said... To Pierpoint Windsor: Thank-you for this comment, now I can finally shut down this laptop and go to bed. I've been reading patiently for something funny to be said and it finally happened.. Funniest blog on here... LMFAO...
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10-09-2009 @4:43AM Kay said... Many years ago, I found a June bug in a can of peas. The can of peas was an off-brand, and I have not purchased off-brand products since. I had to assume that since the products are cheaper, they are not as careful in their handling/production processes.
I also found a tomato worm in my salad one day. Of course, that salad went right back to the restaurant. They apologized, and gave me my money back. No more purchases from there either. When something like that happens, it happens for a reason. Someone is not paying attention.
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10-09-2009 @5:54AM aahz1969 said... For one that is a Red Back spider from Australia. They are just as bad or worse then the regular Black Widow Commonly found in Cal. I for have to disagree on the fact that some of you say that there bite is not deadly for it can kill you if you do not get medical attention soon. There fangs are not shaped like a typical spiders say like the tarantula. Their fangs are pincer shaped and can deliver a very potent amount of venom. One of you stated that they can control the amount is right but they usually deliver a small amount due to the fact that they are just trying to escape not kill you. But if they are not able to get away fast enough they will bite numerous times!! This is why there are so many deaths from them. I was bitten by one and it was a very long time before I was released from the hospital because I am allergic to them as well as all venomous insects. I still have the scar from it to this day. They bite deep so to deliver a lot of venom to it's prey. Anyone who is allergic to insect bites should be wary of them. Most times people get bitten is because they stick their hands in to places that sometime holds these little fiends and the result is a bite. Doesn't take much to get them to bite either. So don't muck with them if you find one. Also insecticides DON'T work on them. They are immune to most all insecticides. That is why they are sometime are found in fruit and other produce.
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10-09-2009 @6:40AM Sarah said... what??? A couple years ago the same thing happend to us at a neighbors. We found a black widow in the grapes my neighbor got rid of it and that was the end of that. How come this guys in the news???
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10-09-2009 @8:52AM TLDear said... The picture has probably been "enhanced" and probably not the actual spider in the story. Otherwise it would be a picture of a spider on grapes or in a jar. The spot on Red Backs is shaped like a skinny, pointed oval. It can range in color from pale orange to bright red. I think it is smaller than the Black Widow,the body is usually no bigger than a dried pea. I've seen several of them in the past 6 years but never met anyone who had been bitten.
I have a niece in Illinois though that bit into the leg ectoskeleton of a large spider while eating grapes and her dad found the spider still alive and well in the bag! (Talk about eek!!)
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10-09-2009 @8:47AM Joey said... Yes they are dangerous...They can really really mess you up if you get bit by them. I know of 3 people here that I am friends with that got bit by them and was in the hospital in ICU...When this spider bites you you can lose a limb or die. If you do not get helo right away...
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10-09-2009 @8:59AM ad said... I live in Florida on a horse farm. I have a zillion spiders everywhere. They make new webs everyday in the barns, on pails, in the wheelbarrow.
You clear a web in the morning and there is a new one at night. Many of the spiders are huge. I just leave them alone because they keep the roach etc. population down. I never use insect spray. I am against poisoning the environment. We have Black Widows everywhere but for the twenty years I have lived here I have never been bitten. Ironically when I moved into a Virgin forest area in the Poconos 23 years ago, I was bitten by a brown recluse spider and I had to be hospitalized. Gangrene formed on my chin where I was bitten and my face and neck swelled up to enormous size. One ear was as large as my face and the skin had cracked from the ear bursting through the skin and oozing pus. I was hospitalized and the doctor said he thought that they would have to cut out the gangrene but luckily I was left with a scar as a reminder.
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10-09-2009 @12:28PM john said... Here comes the ddt ploy again. the question is - did it come from cal., a stop-over, or the store. why is finding a bw such big news? bws are found all over america, people have been bitten by a bw and if it makes the media; you will find it buried on a back page or a low mumble on tv or radio
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10-09-2009 @9:08AM Al said... I've seen a black widow first and only time when I moved to Arizona for a short period. She was more scared of me than I was of her lol. It was shinning black with a red hour glass on it's belly. She was under an outside sewer metal plate. When I lefted that metal plate she took off like a bat out of hell lol.
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10-09-2009 @9:39AM penguingoddess said... the only good spider is a dead one!(sorry im terribly arachniphobic)but someone else can do the killing cause i aint going near it! i live in illinois and we dont get black widows but we get brown recluses very very dangerous!
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10-09-2009 @9:41AM Sam said... To the person who commented on the Brown Recluse being more dangerous your wrong. Black Widows are the most dangerous in the US that I know of. In CA Black Widows are big spiders and you can see the red. Brown Recluses are poisonous too, but I heard somewhere that Wolf Spiders are very dangerous and will go after ppl. Scorpions are little and if bit you get sick for a few days in CA. I moved there for about a year before I came back to the east, I am not to crazy about CA's bugs and rattle snakes.
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10-09-2009 @10:06AM Grey Lady said... This is not unusual. I live on the Esat Coast and my company recieved an overnight package from Texas that had a "hitch hiker"... a small scorpion nestled in some papers. These critters are common in some areas and highly adaptable.
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