A TERRIFIED family found a huge “evil-looking” grasshopper hiding in their Aldi salad bag.
Mum-of-three Kate Bateman opened a bag of kale from the discount chain and dug in – before the “evil-looking” creature jumped out.
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The grasshopper crossed the room as Kate, her husband Neil and their children screamed and jumped out of the way.
Neil, 49, said: “My wife is back from doing her morning shopping at Aldi in Woking.
“She opened a big pallet of chicken – it smelled so bad. It had gone bad and we had to throw it away.
“We thought that was the only problem, until my wife put her hand in the bag of cabbage and something huge jumped out.
“It was horrible, we were all screaming – I just thought, ‘Oh my God, what is this?’
“My 16-year-old son flew out of the room like Forrest Gump and we had to keep our dogs away while this thing was flying around.”
Neil finally trapped the grasshopper in a jar through a ruse involving a jar of strawberries, a cutting board, and a Yankee candle lid.
Surrey’s father told how the grasshopper made a stomach-churning noise as it jumped into the jar.
He described it as “an evil-looking grasshopper” with a protruding golden head.
An internet search revealed that the creature in the jar was an Egyptian locust.
Neil said: “Google said it was the type of locust that God sent as a plague in the Bible.
“What made it worse is that we had just seen huge grasshoppers exactly like this one swarming in the new Jurassic Park show.
“This thing can jump – it can reach the ceiling while still on the floor.
“God knows where it came from or how long it had been in the bag.”
Neil added: “We called Aldi and they told us to burn it – but I don’t have it in me.
“This grasshopper is the hardest thing I’ve ever seen, I wouldn’t know where to start.
Low cost grasshoppers
NEIL is not the first British supermarket shopper to find grasshoppers in his salad.
A Tesco customer in the Somerset town of Burnham-on-Sea found a dead grasshopper in his salad in 2020.
In 2018, a Belfast man found a grasshopper in his Aldi Caesar salad – cut in half and still twitching.
Last December, a builder in North Yorkshire took a bite of a coronation chicken sandwich he made with Sainsbury’s salad leaves.
When he tasted something hard and crunchy, he took it out of his mouth – and realized it was a grasshopper.
And last month, a grasshopper scurried out of a bag of celery a man bought at his local Aldi in Worcester.
“We are not allowed to release it because it could reproduce with other locusts and start a swarm. Like the end of the world.
“You are not allowed to bring them into some countries because of this.
“Meanwhile, while he’s in the jar, we call him Larry the Grasshopper.”
Neil said Aldi offered the family a £50 voucher – even though they had to throw away an entire store costing more than £200.
Aldi said: “Although very rare, this can occasionally occur with produce grown in natural conditions.
“We apologize to Mr Bateman that our usual high standards were not met on this occasion.”
What are Egyptian locusts?
EGYPTIAN locusts can reach a staggering 70mm in length, experts say.
The skin-crawling insects are common in France – but have been appearing more frequently in the UK in recent years.
Unlike other types of locusts, Egyptian locusts are flightless, solitary, and pose no danger to crops.
They tend to be green or yellowish and spend the winter buried in the ground.
Another shopper found an Egyptian grasshopper in a bag of Aldi coriander in 2018.
This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
