Further to my recent post about how spider’s scare the bejesus out of me I was not overjoyed to learn that Brazilian Wandering Spiders have been discovered in the UK, having hitched a lift in a bunch of banana’s from their native South America. I would like to think that all bananas leaving tropical climates are checked thoroughly for creepies, but these spiders are very clever and determined. They pretend to part of the brown skin, sitting very quietly until you get home from the shops then they scuttle off and find a dark crevice.
The BBC recently reported that a Brazilian Wandering Spider has been creeping around a warehouse in Coventry. The Brazilian Wandering Spider is aggressive and won’t hesitate to sink it’s venomous fangs into your skin. Luckily the spider was caught and is now safely housed at Stratford Butterfly Farm in the ‘Nasties Tank’.
In May a family was forced to move out of their home when a Brazilian Wandering Spider jumped out of a bag of bananas and legged it. Too terrified to share their house with such a poisonous creepy, they decided to give the spider run of their home until an expert found it over a week later (now that’s not a job I would not enjoy).
A few days ago a black widow was found in a truck imported from the US. Black Widow spiders are among the most poisonous in the world, although their bites are rarely fatal because of the small amount of venom released. More Black Widows were found in a Lincolnshire factory. The spiders were thought to have dropped out of an engine imported from the US.
I am grateful we don’t have any native poisonous spider’s in Ireland, just plenty of the common house spider which rarely bite humans. At this time of year I like to keep my super long, fluffy duster to hand. If a big, fat hairy spider comes near me it gets it. A quick flick out the window and the spider is back where it belongs – not in my home. But someone should tell the tropical spiders that it’s cold and wet in Ireland. They would hate it here.
Luckily all our technicians are trained to recognise which spiders are Irish and which species are most certainly not, and they have plenty of training on how to get rid of spiders.
I was recently watching a repeat of one of the Top Gear Specials, the one where they travel through South America, starting in Bolivia. Clarkson was scaring Hammond with tales about all the insects that live in the area where they were spending the night, and he too mentioned the Brazilian Wandering Spider. He then went on to talk about Bot flies i think. Clarkson made an interesting comment about the wildlife in Bolivia that they don’t have lions, tigers, elephants or any other deadly big mammals in that part of the world, but simply a large number of the fiercest insects on the planet designed to inflict upon you a most painful disease, if not death. If you are scared of spiders, perhaps leave the Bolivian rainforest off your holiday destination list!