A couple in Maryland found a nasty surprise waiting for them when they opened a prepackaged bag of vegetables and a scorpion was crawling inside.
Shanmukha Pranay Rajeev Jerripothula said that his wife, Sri Sindhusha Boddapati, bought a bag of spinach from Giant in Chevy Chase on Friday. When she opened the bag to make lunch on Monday, she noticed something moving around in the greens, New York Daily News reports.
Boddapati was finally able to coach the critter into an empty water bottle. She said,
I saw something inside the bag, crawling. I thought it was a cricket in the beginning, and then I noticed when it was in the bottle that it is a scorpion.
She recorded the whole thing on her cellphone and sent it to Jerripothula, who immediately went home, took the bottle and returned to the grocery to inform them of the incident. “I told them not to sell the spinach anymore, because it might contain a scorpion,” he said.
Jerripothula pointed out that the packaging said the spinach had been washed. “It says ‘triple washed’ right? Generally people think it was washed.”
Almost six hours after receiving the report, the store pulled the Giant spinach packages from their shelves, according to store representatives. In a statement, the grocery said, “Customer satisfaction is our highest priority. We regret any inconvenience to our customer. We take the quality of our products very seriously, and we are following up with the supplier to take every step to ensure this isolated incident does not occur in the future.”
The company packaging the spinach has not issued any recalls.
Boddapati is still trying to reconcile the fact that she could have been stung by a creature in her salad. “I might have been stung, their bite could be fatal.”
Scorpion stings are painful, Mayo Clinic says, but only about 30 species produce venom that can be deadly in people.
