Last December, when Cindy Mielke was preparing a meal for her family, she opened the fridge, and took out a bag of grapes. That's when she was surprised to find a potentially deadly Black Widow spider had hitched a ride.
"So I had already reached in, grabbed them, glanced down at them and there was a moving black object and I thought oh that's interesting what is that," says Mielke.
After doing some research she quickly figured out it was a black widow spider, hiding inside her fruit.
Instead of killing the poisonous creature, who she nicknamed Grapes, he searched for a new home, ultimately taking the arachnid to Fontanelle Forest, in Bellevue.
"I just felt like it had survived this whole journey and everybody that knows me will tell you I save every animal I can, including a poisonous black widow spider," says Mielke.
While finding a spider in your bag of grapes is rare, it's does happen from time to time.
"I think it's that bundle, that dark seclusion. That there's pockets that they can hide out in and on the vine, grapes offer a lot of space for them to build their web in," says Mielke.
And from there, the spider can find plenty to munch on.
"it's hard to say what they were looking for in the grapes. But there are lots of pests that are attracted to grapes, moths, beetles, flies, all different kinds of things that they could catch and use their fangs to devour," says Jonathan Larson, entomologist, UNL Extension.
While she may have disposed of that bag of grapes, Mielke still buys the fruit.
"Would there be eggs, would there be more, I had no idea, so I threw away that bag of grapes but yeah, we still eat grapes," says Mielke.
She must makes sure to check the bag first.
Now even if Mielke would have been bitten by the spider, it would have likely not have been fatal, as typically the venom of a Black Widow causes intense flu-like symptoms, but not death.
