LOYAL WOMAN FINDS BLACK WIDOW IN GRAPES
Thursday, July 28th, 2011 -- 12:20 PM
A woman from Loyal got more than she bargained for after she bought some grapes for a fruit salad.On July 11, Velora Roehl bought some red grapes from a store in Marshfield. She used some in a fruit salad and put the rest back in the fridge.
A week later, she thought it was time to clean up.
"I picked up the package of grapes, took them to the sink and stuck my hand in there to see if there were any good ones left, and something wiggled," recalls Roehl.
That got her attention.
She looked in the bag and found a web.
"And in this web was a Black Widow spider," she says. "I could see that red hourglass. It was very visible."
"I thought, uh oh. I've got something very dangerous here," Roehl remembers.
It?s rare, but not unheard of for spiders?including the poisonous Black Widow?to hitch a ride on produce. These grapes were picked in Mexico.
Roehl doesn?t want to get the unnamed store in trouble, she just wants people to know this happened.
As for the spider, she captured it in a Marciano Cherry jar. She?s still alive.
"I really don't know how to get rid of her, other than to take her back to the store. I don't want to open the jar, because she tends to hide in the cover of the jar," Roehl notes.
She says "it didn't take her more than a second" to spin a web on the cover of the jar.
The store has offered to do away with the spider and she may take them up on the offer.
The Black Widow is poisonous, but its bite is usually not fatal for humans, it just hurts a lot.
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