Brazilian spider emerges from Waitrose online delivery order

Tuesday, October 21, 2014 - 13:24 by Sarah Collinson

The Brazilian Wandering spider is not native to the UK, but a South London family got a shock when one turned up in their order of groceries, delivered to their door by Waitrose last week, according to the Telegraph.

The spider, which is large, venomous and behaves aggressively if agitated, was found beneath a bunch of bananas by a father of two, while receiving the order placed online. And while they eventually managed to trap the creature and alert the authorities, they did not feel safe enough to sleep in their own home the following night.

As well as the spider itself, the bunch of bananas from Waitrose also contained an egg sac that housed its offspring. An arachnid expert was called on to capture the spider and deal with its unborn young, which were killed by being placed in a freezer.

Incidents of foreign creatures turning up in food imported from foreign lands are rare, but often receive widespread publicity when they do occur. Even before the dawn of safe shopping online it was not unheard of for spiders and other beasties to be shipped to the UK in this way.

Waitrose has offered the family £150 worth of shopping vouchers to make amends for the experience. It also released a statement in which it said that it takes customer safety very seriously and will be tightening up checks to prevent such a debacle occurring in the future.

No doubt, people will be checking their bananas very carefully when they receive them in online orders, especially since suppliers often service multiple supermarkets in the UK. In addition, delivery drivers will be keeping an eye on their cargo to make sure that it does not contain anything that should not be there.