Mystery of the potato onion spider

Curious spider news has been a bit slow as of late, but some elements of this recent story caught my attention.

1. The spider was found in a bag of onion rings. Spiders have made appearances in produce, such as bananas or grapes, but finding them in processed food is pretty rare.

2. The article suggests the spider was still alive, though I'm skeptical. I've seen the highly-mechanized processes used in packaging mass-produced goods, and it seems unlikely a spider could infiltrate such an operation. Not impossible, but unlikely. The spider may have been dead, which doesn't really solve the logistic problem, but is somewhat more believable.

3. The store selling the onion rings apologized to the family and compensated them for their troubles. They clearly have a laser-focused attention to detail, as they suggested the spider likely got in when the potatoes were harvested. Potatoes grow underground, and although many spiders live on the soil surface and some burrow, there is not way a spider could survive harvest, processing, and packaging intact. Also, and this might be a minor point here, the spider was found in a package of onion rings. I'm no botanist, but I don't think onions are potatoes. The science might still be out on that one: teach the controversy!

4. The company said they were going to trace the packaging number from the onion rings to “investigate what happened”. What could they possibly find? I can only imagine they'll pull up records showing that David was working in the packing line the day that package went out. You know David, right? He's the notoriously surreptitious spider sprinkler, wanted in eight counties for adding spiders into assembly lines for unhealthy food products.

As is often true of things on the internet, the comments section for the article is a place of amazement and unjustified hatred. The mother of the child spooked by the spider responds to assaults against her, her lifestyle and parenting, and her child. One comment, which appears to be sincere, sympathizes with the mother but ends by saying that the writer hasn't been outside in 17 years since finding a spider in the garden “just in case there are two of them”. It's either a brilliantly disguised jab at the mother or a shockingly pathological case of arachnophobia. There are way more than two spiders in your garden, but probably none in your onion rings.