Forget about Spider-Man, Patricia Ogle is more concerned about finding Spider-Mum.

The grandmother of seven is on the lookout for an exotic spider in her house after discovering an empty egg sac in a bunch of bananas from Sainsbury’s.

Mrs Ogle, who lives in Grove Hill, Brighton, spotted the sac encased in a sticky web on the fruit.

She said: “It was about three inches long and there was something inside it.

“It looked like a sac of eggs and I don’t know if the mother is lurking around.”

Sainsbury’s delivered Mrs Ogle’s Fairtrade bananas on Thursday but she did not make her alarming discovery until Friday evening when she went to eat one.

She said: “I got the bunch down from where I keep them on top of my freezer and went to pull them apart and there was this sticky stuff like glue holding them together.

“We had to cut the sac away with scissors.

“It looked like candy floss and I put it straight into a jar.

“A man from Sainsbury’s came round on Saturday morning and took it. He said they would send it away to find out what it was.

“The mother spider could be in my kitchen – that’s what’s bothering me. I tried to get on the web to try to find out more but I couldn’t.”

Sainsbury’s buys its Fairtrade bananas from Costa Rica, Ecuador, Colombia, Dominican Republic and the Windward Islands, all of which are home to large and potentially dangerous arachnids.

There have been reports recently that spiders coming from overseas are surviving because of the milder winters we have been having – although any spiders arriving in recent days would probably turn round and head back.

Polegate resident Ray Hale, from the British Tarantula Society, said he thought the latest interloper was probably a large but harmless Huntsman spider.

The creepy-crawly is found in Australia but also in many tropical and semi-tropical parts of the world, including China, Japan and southern parts of the United States, such as Florida and Puerto Rico.

Mr Hale said: “The lady has absolutely nothing to worry about.”

A spokeswoman for Sainsbury’s apologised and said the company was investigating the incident.