One evening, you’re washing lettuce for your dinner and, in among the leafy greens, you notice something that shouldn’t be there: a big, black spider.

Who are you going to call?

Andrew Hebda, curator of zoology at Nova Scotia’s Museum of Natural History, says he hopes you’ll call him.

Back in the bowels of his museum there is cabinet after cabinet full of spiders, scorpions and bugs of all kinds, many of which have been found on food.

These days, Hebda says he’s seeing more and more creatures being brought in after being found on fresh produce.

“Certainly we've seen more over the last 15-20 years, but within the last five years we've seen substantially more,” Hebda said.

Just earlier this week, a black widow spider was brought in after being found on grapes, he said.

The museum keeps about 500,000 species of creatures in these cabinets, and though they haven’t all been found on fruits or vegetables, up to 100 each year are found on food, Hebda said.

Hebda says the reason more insects are being found this way has to do with pesticides.

“In the olden days, there was much more pesticide use, because there was much more pesticide used at that time, both in the field and in transport, you rarely saw anything here,” he said.

“Now there's very little pesticide use in the fields and you notice a lot more organic material.”

He says the type of produce carrying the bugs usually depends on where the species is found in nature.

“If it's a species that lives on the ground and doesn't climb very high, then you’re going to tend to find it on leafy vegetables, like spinaches, cabbages, kale those kinds of things. That for example would be things like your scorpions,” he said.

Halifax resident Kaitlyn Phillips says she has found creepy crawlers in her groceries.

“I was just washing lettuce, and then after I'd taken it off, I noticed there were some bugs in among the dirty water,” she said.

And given the chemical alternative, she says it’s not the worst thing to deal with in the kitchen.

“As long as they're, you know, getting out when I do wash them, I don't mind. I'd rather that than the pesticides.”

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Kayla Hounsell