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Maryland couple find live scorpion in bag of store-brand spinach

By Ben Hooper
A Maryland couple found this scorpion inside a bag of spinach they purchased from a Giant store in Chevy Chase. Screenshot: WJLA-TV
A Maryland couple found this scorpion inside a bag of spinach they purchased from a Giant store in Chevy Chase. Screenshot: WJLA-TV

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April 11 (UPI) -- A Maryland couple said a store initially refused to pull bags of spinach after they found a live scorpion inside a bag they purchased.

Shanmukha Pranay Rajeev Jerripothula and his wife, Sri Sindhusha Boddapati, said they bought the bag of Giant brand spinach from their local Giant store in Chevy Chase last week and Boddapati opened the bag Monday afternoon to make lunch.

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"I saw something inside the bag crawling," Boddapati told WRC-TV. "I thought it was a cricket in the beginning, and then I noticed when it was [in] the bottle that it is a scorpion."

Boddapati captured the creature in a water bottle and sent video of the discovery to her husband.

Jerripothula took the bottled scorpion to the store to try to get managers to pull the spinach from their shelves.

"I told them not to sell the spinach anymore, because it might contain a scorpion," Jerripothula said.

The store refused, however, and didn't pull the spinach bags until about 6 hours later, after being contacted by reporters.

A spokesperson for Giant Food of Landover, Md., issued a statement after the incident.

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"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."

The company did not issue any mass recalls of its products.

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