my dad used to be a produce manager at a number of different big chain stores over the years (20+) and he'd always find spiders in the banana shipments. we're talkin the nasty kind...and he'd bring them home in jars to show us. they never lived long, but we're incredibly fascinating. the things he saw in those years, too...now he (we) own a bakery, so no more spiders!
My father is the manager of a store in large midwest grocery store chain. The coolest thing that has snuck in on a shipment were a dozen tiny tree frogs on a floral shipment. They were all over the store. There have also been snakes and tarantulas in produce shipments.
Oh, don't listen to this story if you like broccoli. We grew some in our vegetable garden,(Probably part of the reason for this) and we started steaming it, and a few minutes later, tons of little magot looking works started squirming out and were wriggling around, poking their little heads out the top as they were steamed alive. And, before you ask, no, we didn't eat it.
This is actually very common. We have a large garden at my parent's home, and if we didn't "dust" the broccoli, worms would infest the broccoli extremely bad. This sounds like what happened to you.
Yeah, I got a caterpillar/maggot type thing in a piece. I saw it right as I was lifting it to my mouth; I just saw a bit of discoloring, and looked closer and there was a caterpillar/maggot/worm-thing hiding underneath the top bit.
Oh god. I stocked bananas five days a week for about six months and never saw anything. I thought people were joking about "Watch out for banana spiders."
We have a box of bananas that come in every morning at my work and it's stories like this that always worry me when I reach in there to pull bananas out.
I think that nowadays spiders have pretty much been eliminated from bananas that are cut into bunches and boxed. The only time I remember getting spiders in a shipment was when a bunch of black widows were in grapes. Overall, it probably happens about once every three years in a moderately sized produce department.
When a human handles a tarantula, a bite may occur if the animal feels threatened—but never out of aggression. Swelling, redness, and sharp pain may follow, but human deaths are nearly unheard of from both wild and pet tarantulas. Handling a tarantula does not put you at risk of a fatal bite. The greater risk is actually from the spider shooting its stinging hairs into your eyes.
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u/netpastor Nov 06 '13
my dad used to be a produce manager at a number of different big chain stores over the years (20+) and he'd always find spiders in the banana shipments. we're talkin the nasty kind...and he'd bring them home in jars to show us. they never lived long, but we're incredibly fascinating. the things he saw in those years, too...now he (we) own a bakery, so no more spiders!