Video: Costco shopper finds black widow spider in grapes

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SEATTLE – When Nancy Pitts opened up her 5-pound container of grapes last night and started to wash them, she found a nasty surprise.

"I got to the bottom of it and all of a sudden… a spider came out," she said.

And it was not your ordinary house spider.

"When I went online, it told me what it was – a black widow spider in my house," she said.

Pitts bought the grapes at Costco and she discovered online that other people had also found black widow spiders in their Costco grapes that came from California.

According to a spider expert at the Burke Museum in Seattle, it's not all that uncommon.

"Some place in the U.S. almost every day of the year somebody finds a black widow in a package of California grapes," said Rod Crawford, curator of arachnids, Burke Museum.

Crawford says while the black widow is the most dangerous spider in the U.S., spider bites are very rare.

"If you get bitten by a black widow, you should see a doctor, but nobody has died from a black widow bite in the U.S. since the 1960s. It's not exactly public enemy number one," he said.

But just finding one was enough to make Pitts think twice.

"I don't think I'll be buying any grapes anytime soon," she laughed.

She saved the spider hoping to give it to the Woodland Park Zoo or the University of Washington. But Crawford suggested that she either give it to someone who wants to keep it as a pet or kill it by putting it in the freezer.