How about a big ol' bag of organic heebie-jeebies?

I have to do my shopping in more than one place usually since not every place has what I need to buy. Walmart's good for cat food and toiletries and such, but I have to go to Kroger for my organics and vegetarian foods.

While standing in the organic produce, I got excited that they had red and green grapes as they usually don't carry them (organic). I'm SO PICKY about things like grapes because I don't want to pay for the squished "dead" grapes in the bottom of the bag, nor do I want a cluster of grapes that are so old that they'll fall off of their vines really easily. So what I usually do is find a good lookin' bag, unzip it, and take out the clusters indvidually. I then give 'em a good shake, empty the bag of loose grapes, and then put my clusters to purchase back in the bag.

While standing there, I'd just unzipped a bag, pulled a cluster out, and looked down to find one of the BIGGEST, JUICIEST, LONG-LEGGIEST BLACK WIDOW SPIDERS I'D ever seen!!!!!!

I immediately zipped the bag, paused, tried to keep my hands from shaking terribly, and opened the bag again to have a look.

Her looooong, sleek, shiny black legs stretched out almost as to say, "Why did you bother me?"

*ZIP*

I was all nervous as though she was going to gnaw through the bag and jump at my throat.

I wheeled the cart over to the floral department where I took a picture, but was afraid to stand there with the bag open too long and my doggone hand down in the bag for fear she just might have enough energy to eat one of my fingers or something...

So, anyway, I took a picture, calmly drove my buggy to customer service, and asked to talk to the manager.

I showed the kid at the counter who very firmly stated he "did NOT like spiders" when I asked him if he wanted to get a closer look, haha!

"I'm a Southern girl. I know what a Black Widow looks like. THAT is a Black Widow!"

The manager came over and saw it and said that he's seen Brown Recluse spiders in green grapes before, but hadn't seen anything like this in a long time.

Another employee (who was really familiar with Black Widows) confirmed it, as well.

I felt bad that I'd disturbed the sleeping beauty and that they were going to kill her, but when it comes to man versus bug-that-can-make-you-really-sick, I tend to get defensive and apologize before ending it.


The manager was going to alert the other recipient stores of those particular grapes just to make sure that nobody gets hurt.

Really, had anyone reached into her "lair," it would've been a nasty situation. You can't tell from my photo, but she was a *HUGE* spider and likely has a family somewhere.


Okay. Let's see the only nervously-taken photo I got on my whimpy little camera --


I tried to lighten it some...


and enlarge it...



Know what I took from all of this with a huge amount of glee??!!

On the phone with Chris, he said, "Hey, well at least you *KNOW* that they're truly organic and not sprayed down with pesticides."


True dat, my love. True dat.

Would I prefer a Black Widow in my grapes over the pesticides? A MILLION TIMES OVER.