AlfWe’re gonna be nice and not make you look at spiders but this is what to look out for, OK?
We’re not saying that if YOU buy a bunch of bananas at the store, they’ll be full of dozens of poisonous spider babies. We’re just saying that happened to this one lady. No, not our friend’s cousin’s teacher — an actual lady who was written about in the news.
Her name is Consi Taylor, and she lives in London and shops at the British supermarket chain Sainsbury’s — or at least, she used to, though she probably never will again. That’s because, as she was recently munching on a Sainsbury’s banana, she realized that it had a spot of white mold … and then seconds later realized that the mold spot was actually an egg sac full of dozens of tiny spiders. Possibly Brazilian wandering spiders, once named the world’s most venomous by the Guinness Book of World Records. It’s just like that old joke: “What’s worse than finding a worm in your apple? Finding an egg sac full of highly poisonous baby spiders after you’ve already finished eating half of the banana! Apple. I’ve lost track of what this joke was about.”
The Taylors evacuated their house and had it fumigated, which was probably overkill — spiders that young don’t have jaws big enough to bite, and baby spiders have a very bad shot at surviving to adulthood anyway, with only one in 500 reaching maturity. Sainsbury’s, meanwhile, offered them a gift card worth about $16, which was almost certainly underkill. (They’ve since given the Taylors a larger settlement.)
The grocery store is saying that these were probably foliage spiders, not Brazilian wandering spiders, but then again, THEY WOULD. For real, though, your chances of getting an infested banana bunch are vanishingly small. Just to be on the safe side, though, do not eat bananas unless you have an emo pig nearby to distract the spiders when they hatch.
