One man’s trip to the grocery store turned out really creepy – literally.
While opening up a bunch of bananas he bought from UK grocery store Tesco, Craig Harrison, 35, noticed a giant female spider in the bag — along with her egg sac that could’ve contained up to 200 babies.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a shock horror reaction like it before. I was completely gobsmacked to discover it,” Harrison told Caters, adding it “gave me the fright of my life.”
And the spider wasn’t just huge — it was also venomous, too.
Known as the Huntsman spider, it is the largest arachnid in the world and can be pretty painful — though not deadly — if it bites you due to its venom, according to Live Science.
This particular kind of spider can grow to have up to a 1-foot-long leg span.
“I don’t consider myself to have a spider phobia, generally,” Harrison admitted. “This one was in a completely different league though!”
He explained that when he grabbed the bag of bananas in the store, he was clueless that there was a spider with eggs nestled in it.
“I had no idea the package I picked up in store had a Huntsman spider hidden inside. The spider had been nestled between the bananas, out of sight, clutching onto its egg sac,” Harrison said.
“The bag wasn’t fully transparent, which obscured any view of it.”
Harrison, who works in IT, said that he only noticed the creepy crawler after he saw the bag move and the Huntsman escaping from it.
When he realized the horror that he was seeing, Harrison scooped up the creature and sealed it in a Tupperware container, sending it off to the supermarket’s pest control service.
Upon receiving the spider, the supermarket confirmed that the bag of bananas had come from the Dominican Republic, more than 4,000 miles away from Windsor, the town in England where Harrison lives.
There was no word on the fate of the spider or its unborn offspring.
Now, Harrison is urging others to make sure they double-check what’s in their pre-packaged produce.
“I encourage others to be vigilant when buying pre-packaged fruit and vegetables — it’s not impossible for creatures to work their way into our homes in this way,” he said.
He revealed that Tesco has offered him £100 — about $125US — in return for the hair-raising ordeal, but he hasn’t decided whether he’s going to accept the cash yet.
“I’ll be checking all my pre-packaged fruit from now on, or preferably buy loose goods,” Harrison declared.
But the worst part of it all?
Harrison ate the banana.