Everybody has his or her own pest infestation story. Maybe you experienced the horrors of having a bat loose in your home as a child, or maybe a mischievous mouse crawled around your home at night while you slept. As entertaining as these stories are to hear, and as frightening as they must have been to experience, there are very few people who can claim to have experienced the worst pest infestation in the history of the world. Of course, there are several different types of troublesome pests that can come to infest a home. For example, the worst ant infestation in history is probably preferable to the worst scorpion infestation in history; after all, some species of scorpion can supposedly inflict fatal stings. Not much could be worse than having an infestation of insects or spiders that possess deadly forms of venom. Luckily, it is rare to hear about individuals dying as a result of a bite or a sting from one single insect or spider, so having a home-infestation consisting of nothing but deadly arthropods seems pretty farfetched, right? As farfetched as it may seem, deadly insects and spiders have been responsible for some of the worst pest infestations in history, according to several real-estate professionals.
Back in September of 2015, a government employee visited a home in Australia in order to check the energy meter. Upon arriving to the meter, the employee was horrified to find an enormous spider with numerous spiderlings crawling on its back. A picture of the horrific spider and her babies were posted to Reddit where people quickly debated over the spider’s identity. Most agreed that the specimen and her babies were either wolf or huntsmen spiders, but nearly all agreed that the meter maid was lucky to have avoided a bite that certainly would have sent him to the emergency room.
Back in 2007, Brian and Susan Trost purchased a 450,000 dollar home in Weldon Spring, Missouri. Unfortunately, the owners quickly realized that their new home came with a spider infestation. The infestation was four to five thousand spiders strong, and according to Brian, the walls would regularly “bleed spiders”. The spiders were identified as brown recluses, which are highly venomous and have been responsible for numerous human deaths. The couple battled the infestation for four straight years before giving up after their insurance company refused to cover the cost of the spider-infested home. Happily, after several weeks of litigation, a judge ordered the insurance company to pay the couple 472,000 dollars in damages. Considering the couple shared a home with thousands of potentially deadly spiders for four years, they are lucky to be alive.
Have you ever sustained a bite from any type of spider species? If you have, did you ever identify the species?