The mention of locusts conjures up images of one of the 10 fabled plagues in the Bible.

So you probably wouldn’t think you’d run into one down the Sturry Road.

But when Laura Jowers, 61, popped into the Canterbury branch of Lidl, it was this peculiar sight that confronted her.

The insect – which was about four inches long – had attached itself upright to a pillar outside the cut-price German supermarket.

Teacher Laura, of Tyler Close, St Stephen’s, said: “We saw it on the way out and there was a crowd of people looking at it – probably because it was so big.

"We didn’t touch it as we didn’t want to prod or disturb it.

“It didn’t move except when one of its feelers twitched. We can only assume it came over to England in some sort of produce container.”

Peter Gay, our sister paper the Kentish Gazette’s resident nature expert, believes fruit importation from North Africa is the most likely explanation for the locust’s appearance in Canterbury.

“We saw it on the way out and there was a crowd of people looking at it probably because it was so big" - Laura Jowers

“If you look at where locusts are found in the UK, it tends to be at supermarkets which are bringing in fruit,” he said.

“In our winter things like strawberries and tomatoes come from the likes of Morocco and Egypt.

“I think the locust will be a desert locust of the variety Schistocerca Gregoria. They are the biblical plague locusts that occur in North Africa, including Egypt and Morocco.

“At this time of the year it could have arrived with strawberries, now being imported in large quantities from those countries, or perhaps tomatoes from Morocco, but it won’t survive long in this cold.”