Family forced to flee home after discovering 'terrifying' nest of spiders in bananas
White nests were mistaken for mould until spiders began crawling out
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Your support makes all the difference.A family in the UK were forced to leave their home when they discovered hundreds of spiders crawling out of a bunch of bananas purchased from a local shop.
Father-of two Jamie Roberts said he noticed white patches on the bananas after placing them in a bowl but assumed it was simply mould, until hundreds of spiders began scuttling from the fruit.
Mr Roberts, who already suffers from arachnophobia, told the Mail Online he then rang the One Stop store he purchased the bananas from, who organised for pest control to visit the house and arranged for the family to stay in a hotel.
Their Staffordshire home had to be evacuated for three days as toxic fumes were used to kill the spiders and make the property safe again.
Mr Roberts described the whole experience as "terrifying". He said: “I could see tiny legs and realised they were spiders. At that point, I wasn’t too concerned because I thought they looked dead.
“I started to sweep the patches into the bin but then they all started moving.
“It was like something out of a horror film because suddenly the window sill was moving with hundreds of these spiders.
Although the eight-legged creatures have not been formally identified, Mr Roberts said he thought they could be Brazilian Wandering Spiders, which appear in the Guinness World Records from 2010 as the world's most venomous spider.
Pest control were unable to identify the particular species of the spider as they were not fully grown, he added.
The arachnids are commonly known as the ‘banana spider’ and harbour a venom known as neurotoxin – a poison that can induce a total loss of muscle control, breathing problems, partial paralysis and eventual asphyxiation.
His wife Crystal added: “I unpacked the bananas from the cellophane wrapper and put it in the bin so it’s possible the ‘queen spider’ may have been in there.
“I looked up different types of spiders online and found they looked identical to Brazilian Wandering Spiders.”
A spokesperson for One Stop said: “As soon as our customer contacted us about this issue we took all necessary precautions, including organising pest control to visit the house and arranging for our customer and his family to stay in a hotel while the fumigation took place.
"We’d like to reassure all our customers that such instances are extremely rare and we are carrying out a thorough investigation into how this happened.”
In November last year, a family were forced to evacuate their home when a woman purchased bananas crawling with hundreds of spiders believed to be Brazilian wandering spiders.
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