LACONIA, N.H. (AP) – A 20-year-old grocery clerk is recovering after being bitten by a black widow spider hidden in a bunch of grapes.

Vista Foods clerk Garrett Cota-Robles was bitten on Wednesday and was hospitalized at Lakes Region General Hospital.

Cota-Robles’ mother, Gretchen Preston, says doctors expect her son to make a full recovery, although he was in considerable pain.

Jim Prive, vice president and general manager of Associated Grocers of New England, confirmed a store employee had been bitten by a spider.

Officials from Northern New England Poison Control and doctors at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center conferred with doctors at Lakes Region General Hospital and confirmed that it was a black widow, Preston said.

“Just watching my son, it’s been fairly terrorizing,” Preston said. “The pain started in the arm and gradually spread throughout his body, almost as if you have severe arthritis. He’s looking better, but pain management is still a problem.”

A black widow’s venom typically lasts up to 48 hours in a human. Laconia Fire Chief Ken Erickson said the spider had the black widows “distinctive red hourglass belly.”

As a precaution, Associated Grocers has pulled all Shalom Fancy Table Grapes-brand Thompson seedless grapes, which were distributed by Anthony Vineyards of Bakersfield, Calif., from its Laconia store, said Prive.

Prive said the grapes did not come through the Associated Grocers distribution network. He said no other Vista Foods stores had that brand of grapes on their shelves on Wednesday.

In early June, a Nashua woman found a black widow spider in a bunch of grapes she bought at a Market Basket store there. At the time, Market Basket officials said the chance of finding live spiders in produce is increasing because growers are required to user weaker pesticides.

Black widows are not common in northern New England, said Karen Simone, director of Northern New England Poison Control. The American Association of Poison Control Centers has recorded no human deaths by black widows since 1983, although four people have died from other spider bites, she said.

AP-ES-07-09-04 0854EDT