Black widow found in grapes at Walmart in Ontario

An Ontario woman said she panicked when she found a venomous black widow in a bag of grapes her husband bought at Walmart earlier in the day.

“I remember wondering why there were so many webs on the grapes. Then I saw this spider struggling in the water,” said Ginette Guidi of Oakville, who added, “I was completely freaked out.”

Although it is rare to find a black widow in Canada, one species has migrated to British Columbia and another to southern Ontario.

Another way to see the venomous spider is if it travels on produce from the southern United States or Mexico.

“I’m just happy that no one was bitten, not my child, not my parents, not my husband,” Guidi said.

The black widow spider does not typically bite unless provoked or picked up, but if it does bite, its venom can cause severe pain, muscle cramps, and fever.

Guidi said it was a Saturday night in late June when she said her husband stopped at a Walmart to run some errands and also bought grapes as a healthy snack.

Guidi says that while she was washing the grapes, she saw the spider and managed to catch it without getting bitten.

“It took a lot of courage, but I managed to capture him and when I looked closely, I could see the marks on his abdomen and I couldn’t even believe it. I was in total shock,” Guidi said.

CTV News Toronto took photos of the black widow spider Guidi had and sent them to experts at the Toronto Zoo and they agreed it appeared to be a black widow spider.

Spider expert Jon Spero is the Toronto Zoo’s keeper of birds and terrestrial invertebrates and he showed CTV News Toronto the only black widow the zoo currently has, as they are typically kept alone because they have a reputation for attacking and killing other black widow spiders in their presence.

“It’s the Western black widow, it has a very big, very shiny abdomen,” Spero said.

Spero said it is extremely rare to find this type of spider in Ontario, but they are sometimes found in fruit shipped to Canada. The grapes Guidi purchased came from Mexico.

“If you find one, it tends to come in products that could be worrisome if it surprised you,” said Spero, who added that if you are bitten by a black widow, it’s usually not fatal, but it hurts a lot and you need to get to a hospital.

“The venom causes a lot of pain and can also cause muscle cramps and fever,” Spero said.

A Walmart spokesperson told CTV News: “Food safety is a top priority at Walmart Canada and we take customer concerns very seriously. Our stores have procedures in place to ensure products meet our high expectations for freshness and quality. We have notified our quality assurance team and are currently investigating the matter.”

Guidi said she was relieved that no one in her house was hurt and that for now, she still had the spider.

“Right now it’s in a container on our balcony waiting for its next move,” Guidi said.

The family had hoped to donate the spider so it could be studied, but according to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, if you find a black widow, scorpion or honeybee in an imported food, they should be killed and disposed of very carefully.