A TERRIFIED family found a huge “evil-looking” locust lurking in their bag of Aldi salad.
Mum-of-three Kate Bateman opened a bag of kale from the discount chain and reached in – before the “evil-looking” critter jumped out.
The SunLarry the ‘evil-looking’ Egyptian locust[/caption]
The SunThe locust jumped around the kitchen[/caption]
The SunBut Neil trapped him through an elaborate ruse[/caption]
The locust zipped across the room as Kate, her husband Neil and their kids screamed and leapt out the way.
Neil, 49, said: “My wife had come back from doing the morning shop at Aldi in Woking.
“She opened a big pallet of chicken – it smelled so bad. It had gone off and we had to throw it away.
“We thought that was the only problem until my wife put her hand in the bag of kale and this huge thing jumped out.
“It was awful, we were all screaming – I just thought, ‘My God, what is that?’
“My 16-year-old son flew out of the room like Forrest Gump and we had to keep our dogs back while this thing zoomed around.”
Neil finally trapped the locust in a jar through a ruse involving a punnet of strawberries, a chopping board and a Yankee candle lid.
The Surrey dad told how the locust made a stomach-churning thwack as it jumped around inside the jar.
He described it as “one evil-looking locust” with a bulging golden head.
An internet search revealed that the critter in the jar was an Egyptian locust.
Neil said: “Google said it was the kind of locust which God sent as a plague in the Bible.
“What made it worse is that we’d just seen massive locusts exactly like this one swarming around in the new Jurassic Park show.
“This thing can jump – it can reach the ceiling from a standing start on the floor.
“God knows where it had come from or how long it had been in the bag.”
Neil added: “We rang up Aldi and they told us to burn it – but I haven’t got that in me.
“This locust is the hardest thing I’ve seen, I wouldn’t know where to start.
Low-cost locusts
NEIL is not the first Brit supermarket shopper to find a locust in his salad.
A Tesco customer the Somerset town of Burnham-on-Sea found a dead locust in their salad back in 2020.
Back in 2018 a Belfast man found a locust in his Aldi Caesar salad – cut in half and still squirming.
Last December a builder in North Yorkshire took a bite out of a coronation chicken sandwich he’d made with Sainsbury’s salad leaves.
When he tasted something hard and crunchy, he took it out of his mouth – and realised it was a locust.
And last month a locust made a dash from a bag of celery which a man had bought at his local Aldi in Worcester.
“We’re not allowed to release it because it could breed with other locusts and start a swarm. Like the end of the world.
“You’re not allowed to bring them into some countries because of that.
“In the meantime, while it’s sitting in the jar, we’ve called it Larry the Locust.”
Neil said Aldi offered the family a £50 voucher – even though they had to throw away an entire shop costing more than £200.
Aldi said: “Whilst very rare, this can occasionally occur with products that are grown in natural conditions.
“We have apologised to Mr Bateman that our usual high standards were not met on this occasion.”
What are Egyptian locusts?
EGYPTIAN locusts can grow to a whopping 70mm in length, experts say.
The skin-crawling insect are common in France – but have been turning up in the UK more often in recent years.
Unlike other kinds of locust, Egyptian ones are flightless, solitary and pose no danger to crops.
They tend to be green or yellowish in colour and spend the winter burrowed into soil.
Another shopper found an Egyptian locust in a bag of Aldi coriander back in 2018.