A British woman was shocked to find that a bunch of grocery store bananas she bought was infested with a cocoon of dangerous Brazilian spiders, the venom of which can give a man a painful four-hour erection if it doesn’t kill him first.
Customer Maria Layton, bought the Costa Rican bananas in a Tesco grocery store–one of Britain’s largest chains–but when she brought the fruits home she noticed a bad spot in one of them.
Upon handling the fruit the cocoon of spiders inside the banana started to hatch disgorging a horde of the tiny spiders. The woman then rushed to encase the fruit and spiders in a sealed Tupperware container and threw it in the freezer.
The woman said she recognized that the arachnids were Brazilian Wandering Spiders because she had just watched a TV news story about them.
These spiders are quite dangerous with venom that can kill a person in only two hours. But in smaller doses the venom can also give men a painful four-hour erection. In fact, scientists are studying the venom hoping it might help treat erectile dysfunction.
The woman called the Tesco customer service line and the store advised her to bring the fruit back so that they could rescan the barcode on the packaging in order to give her a refund.
But Layton was surprised that the store didn’t seem to be worried about the dangerous spiders.
“I was shocked, they failed to see the potential threat to me and my family and thought I was only interested in having a pound or so back,” she said.
A Tesco spokesperson told the media that their policy is “for the customer to take the product to the store where it can be investigated” and that they have no procedures for store representatives to go to customers’ homes.
Tesco recently became the most profitable supermarket chain in Britain.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com