The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)

Shock as man finds nest of spiders in fruit

Spiders were found in an egg sac among bananas purchased

- AILEEN ROBERTSON arobertson@thecourier.co.uk

A Fife man feared his house could become infested with spiders after they crawled out of his Aldi bananas.

Retired teacher Glenn Jones, 65, unpacked his shopping to find a family of spiders contained in an egg sac among the fruit he had bought from the shop in St Andrews.

And he described how he struck the mother spider with a copy of The Courier fearing it could be poisonous.

“I normally usher spiders out of the house because I’m not in favour of whacking them,” said Mr Jones, of Cellardyke.

“But I had no idea if it was a poisonous spider about to disappear into a crevice in my home.

“I reached for The Courier. Faced with an unknown species of banana spider, there was only one quick response.”

Mr Jones said the egg sac was about the size of a hen’s egg, and the camel coloured spider was around two inches across.

After dispatchin­g the spider, he noticed that the eggs inside the sac were hatching and saw tiny green spiders about to escape.

“I sealed up all the little ones because they were also about to make a break for spaces where they could disappear,” he said.

The supermarke­t chain’s customer services responded to an email from Mr Jones with an apology and reassuranc­e that the spider was harmless.

Daniel Hodgkins said: “We are sorry that this incident has happened and wish to advise you that we have not received any other customer complaints in regards to this product.

“Billions of bananas are shipped from the tropics into Europe each year and very, very occasional­ly an insect may avoid detection.

“Sac spiders occur almost everywhere around the world and in Europe we have a number of our own native species, and sac spiders are harmless.”

“I reached for The Courier. Faced with an unknown species of banana spider, there was only one quick response. GLENN JONES

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 ??  ?? Our pictures clearly show the egg sac and the spider which emerged from the bananas which gave Cellardyke man Glenn Jones a bit of scare.
Our pictures clearly show the egg sac and the spider which emerged from the bananas which gave Cellardyke man Glenn Jones a bit of scare.

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