Woman Finds A Live Scorpion In Her Bag Of Spinach

Hentz Striped Scorpion - Centruroides hentzi, Archbold Biological Station, Venus, Florida
Flickr | judygva

I have a confession to make. I don’t often wash my salad before using it. I mean, the box claims it’s “triple-washed,” so why should I bother, right?

Um, because there might be a live scorpion crawling inside the spring mix?

No, really. That’s exactly what just happened to a woman in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Sri Sindhusha Boddapati was preparing her lunch on Monday. She was using bagged spinach she had just bought from Giant (a chain of grocery stores in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia). Suddenly, she noticed something a bit odd. It seemed as if something was… crawling inside the spinach. Upon closer inspection, she thought, “Is that a cricket?”

She leaned in to examine it more closely. No, not a cricket. A SCORPION. Yes, a scorpion. (Fun fact: Scorpions sting about 1.2 million people a year. These stings can be incredibly painful and even lethal. Although, I guess that’s kind of the OPPOSITE of a fun fact.)

RELATED: A Bite From This Bug Could Make You Allergic To Meat

Anyway, after making the horrific discovery, Boddapati immediately leaped into action. First, she somehow managed to trap the creepy-crawler in a water bottle (which is kind of amazing, considering I have to give myself a 20-minute pep talk before I can approach and kill a simple house spider.) She took cellphone video of the captured creature, then called her husband Shanmukha Pranay Rajeev Jerripothula at work to tell him the scary story.

scorp
NBC4

The couple wanted to make sure that no other consumers were in danger, so they contacted News4 Washington. Jerripothula brought the scorpion into the Giant location as proof of their frightening encounter. Hours later, Giant pulled the brand from their shelves.

They issued the following statement to the News4 team:

“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.”

scorp2
NBC4

The product has not yet been recalled. But, if you have any Giant brand spinach in your fridge, you might want to check it VERY carefully—or just toss it.

And before you think you can rest easy if you just have regular old salad greens in your fridge instead of spinach, well you might want to think again, because a DEAD BAT was recently found inside a bag of salad mix sold at a Florida grocery store.

I don’t know about you, but I think I’m going to be washing my greens before I use them from now on.

RELATED: Mom Says She Found Mold In Her Son’s Applesauce Pouches

Or, maybe I will just stick to eating pizza.

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About the Author
Bridget Sharkey
Bridget Sharkey is a freelance writer covering pop culture, beauty, food, health and nature.

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