There’s no mistaking the black widow insignia: the spider, perhaps the most famous of all lethal spiders, bears the red hourglass, as if to remind us of the very mortality its bite can cost. No wonder, then, that Yvonne Duckhorn didn’t simply shrug when she noticed such a spider on her grapes.
She reported that Thursday she bought some red grapes from Aldi supermarket in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, and as she washed and ate the delectable fruit at her home she discovered something slimy that brushed up against her hand.
“The next thing I know, there was this leg coming up over a grape,” she explained to ABC 27.
Capturing the lethal arachnid in plastic, it was confirmed to be the notorious spider by Ryan ‘The Bug Man’ Bridge, who said, “There’s no mistaking a black widow, even in a juvenile form like this. There is just enough there that you can really tell it’s a black widow.”
He further explained that these spiders lay their web around grapes, often enough, so he hears reports of people finding them among grapes “more often than anything else.”
The incidents are so frequent that 20-year-old Callum Merry just had a similar episode this month in Brighton Michigan when he purchased some grapes at Kroger’s and there also noticed the ominous black beast.
“I looked in the grapes and there was a black widow staring right at me,” Merry said to ABC affiliate WXYZ-TV.
What this means for you and me, especially if we live in Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota, or Wisconsin, is to look before you grab the grapes from your local grocery store. If, perchance, you are bit by the infamous spider, don’t worry: they are most lethal to children and the elderly who fail to seek treatment, but if you seek treatment, you should do alright.