[Carruthers]

Brazilian Wandering spider delivered in Waitrose online shopping
Most customers would welcome a free item in their online grocery shop – but not when it’s a deadly spider and a bulging egg sac

A family were forced to flee their home after finding an aggressive Brazilian Wanderer spider in their online Waitrose delivery.

Tim, a father of two young sons from South London, was cooking breakfast when the family’s Waitrose grocery delivery arrived. As he unpacked a bunch of bananas he was shocked to discover a huge spider with long hairy legs lurking in the fruit.

When he went online to identify the arachnid he was even more horrified to discover it was a Brazilian Wanderer – an aggressive and venomous spider usually found in South and Central America.

Even with the spider successfully captured the family were too frightened to sleep in their home that night. “I keep thinking that the spider could have killed me or my son if he had gone to get a banana".
Waitrose offered the family £150 of shopping vouchers in compensation and said: “The safety of our customers is our absolute priority.

‘We did everything we could to look after our customer during what was a distressing incident and we’ve apologised personally. Although this is highly unusual, we’re taking it very seriously and will be working with our supplier to minimise the risk of this happening again.”

Last month a mother from Essex found eggs from a Brazilian Wandering spider hidden in her Tesco bananas and had to have her vacuum incinerated after she tried to clean them up.

Brazilian Wanderer bites are rarely fatal, but their venom can cause a range of severe side effects including extreme pain, inflammation of the throat and lungs, paralysis, salivation and convulsions.

The Guinness Book of World Records lists Brazilian Wandering spiders as the world's most venomous. The species belongs to the ‘Phoneutria’ genus – which fittingly means ‘murderess’ in Greek.

Tim - who withheld his surname - called the police and the RSPCA, both of whom were unable to handle the creature. Help eventually came from a pest expert who dispatched the spider into a plastic box and put the egg sac into a freezer to kill the offspring.

Daily Telegraph.

....extreme pain, inflammation of the throat and lungs, paralysis, salivation and convulsions.

Much ado about nothing, really.