A British family was forced to evacuate their home after a sac of deadly baby spiders were found in bananas they purchased at a local supermarket in the Hamptons.
According to ABC News, Consi Taylor, 29, purchased some bananas from her local Sainsbury's supermarket and was munching away on one, when suddenly she noticed a white patch on the banana. Taylor said after looking a bit closer, on what she thought was a mold and realized that the white patch was actually a cocoon with dozens of baby spiders in it.
"I got halfway through the banana when I saw something white on the skin," Taylor told The Sun newspaper in Britain. "I had a closer look and was horrified to see they were spiders. They were hatching out on the table, scurrying around on my carpet. I was so scared I started crying. I hope I didn't eat one but I can't be sure."
Taylor took a picture of the spiders and sent it to her local pest control company for guidance. Pest control said the tiny critters could be Brazilian wandering spiders, a species that Guinness World Records designated the world's most venomous spider in 2010.
Taylor, her husband, and two children evacuated their home and had it fumigated, according to The Sun. Steven Falk, an entomologist with the invertebrate conservation trust Buglife, said that even if the spiders had been the venomous wandering spider, the babies didn't pose a real threat to humans.
"The truth is often very mundane," Falk told ABC News, adding that "A baby spider doesn't have big enough jaws to bite you."
Taylor went to the store where she bought the bananas and was offered $16 in compensation at the time, according to ABC News. In the end, they paid for her three-day hotel stay, the cost of fumigating her home and her dry-cleaning bill. Moreover, Sainsbury's offered an apology to Taylor over the spiders in bananas incident.
"We're very sorry and have apologized to Mr and Mrs Taylor," the supermaket said. "We do have rigorous controls on imported products at all stages from harvesting to transportation which is why this is so rare."
In 2011, a banana spider was found in a supermarket in Germany, which prompted the store to be evacuated.
