An Asda customer got a huge shock when she bought a pack of bananas from the supermarket.
Ashlea shared a video on TikTok of what happened when she came home and opened up the pack. As she unwrapped the packaging she found none other than a cockroach sitting on top of the fruit.
In the clip she said: “I’ve just opened my bananas” before zooming the camera in to focus on the terrifying insect. Ashlea then backed away and screamed, “What do I do with it?”
The pest then crawls into the gap between two of the Asda bananas, infiltrating deeper into the pack. Ashlea can also be heard asking someone next to her, “Can you get it? Please get it” but the other person, equally as shocked and confused, responded “What do you mean get it?”
The clip, captioned, ‘Got a surprise gift with my bananas! Thanks @Asda”’ has garnered 968,200 views, 51,500 likes and more than 1,500 comments, at the time of writing. One user said: “Oh my God I would actually pass out. Seeing THEM in THIS COUNTRY?! No. No. Nope!”
Another added: “I never ever take bananas into the house..I’ll buy one and eat it in the carpark….worked in retail and seen stuff ower the years.” Someone else asked the user what they have seen and they replied “spiders and frogs occasionally.”
A different person who also worked in retail shared: “I used to work in a supermarket and one time there was a tropical spider in a batch and had to quarantine the entire roller of stock lol. I always buy loose bananas now, never in plastic.”
Other users who were scared by Ashlea’s discovery commented: “Girl that does actually look like a cockroach and that’s terrifying because if it is, they fly” and “oh absolutely not!! I don’t think I will be buying bananas again and I’m being serious.” Someone else who had a cockroach visit their home revealed their story.
They recalled: “We found one in our bathroom. It got a free holiday via my son’s suitcase. Had to put sticky traps down to catch it then put it in a jar. Took 3 days for it to die and that was after losing its legs!”
An Asda spokesperson said: “We make every effort to ensure our fresh produce is washed and any tag-along is removed before it is packed. If any customer spots something that doesn’t seem right with a product, we would encourage them to let us know so that it can be looked into.”
Some TikTok users questioned if there really are cockroaches in the UK as these insects are often thought to be in countries with warm, tropical climates only. Prokill, a professional pest prevention company, has said that we do, in fact, get cockroaches here in the UK.
It added that “we even have a couple of species which are native to the UK so although you probably are less likely to see them here, there are certain behaviours which can encourage cockroaches.”
Prokill noted that cockroaches in the UK are “typically found living indoors” and can go “100 days without food but they can’t survive more than a couple days without water”. This means they’re “more likely to be hiding out somewhere they can easily gain access to a source of water.”
This makes bathrooms and kitchens a common place to find cockroaches. Prokill advises to check at the back of any cabinets, behind sinks, baths, toilets, dishwashers and washing machines and anywhere that’s dark and sheltered.
