Unfortunately, that’s only the very tip of the iceberg. It’s not so much that it was horrible for the victim – though I imagine death from a Black Widow bite is hardly pleasant – but for he observer… Jesus fried Christ on a bagel[sup]*[/sup]. I want to scream like a little girl.
WARNING: Not for those easily wigged out by creepy crawlies or reptiles. Seriously.
[sub]* It’s Sacrelicious![/sub]
What an idjit. I actually like spiders, but keeping a deadly venomous animal as a pet is just…words fail me.
Not me – here’s some words for this guy:
Hey moron! They’re spiders! They only reason they exist it to plot the death of every single human being on the planet, with a side plan of eliminating all that is beautiful in the world! What in the happy hopping fuck are you doing keeping them as fricking pets?!
I’d sooner snuggle up with a running chainsaw.
My skin crawled off my body and and is twitching and whimpering in the corner, and my face is frozen in a rictus of horror.
Ew. Just…ewwwww. EWWWWWW! EEEEEEEK!!!
I like spiders.
But, ewww.
Strange story. Why do they think a black widow is responsible? Postmortem is not done yet. Black widow bites are rarely fatal to healthy adults. They sort of explained how the spiders got out (how does one heating element explode let alone two?) but how did the reptiles get loose? Why did they all stay in the apartment? I was not aware that spiders would eat chunks of flesh. Unless the reptiles were something like Kimodo Dragons I don’t see how they could rip chunks of flesh from the body either. Yup this is one strange story. My Spidey sense is tingling.
Hee. I think I mentioned this when this story came up before, but it reminds me of when I lived in the Bronx and heard about a guy who bought a live chicken to feed his boa constrictor. The boa got so excited by the smell or whatever that he turned around and smushed the guy to death.
Auuuugggghhhhh. That’s just…Aughhhhhhh. :eek:
I bet the scene was surreal.
And now I am going to busy myself with something because sitting here after reading that has given me the creepy crawlies.
I about jumped out of my seat when I felt a stray hair tickle my leg. I know, we were warned.
I navigated to the home page of the referenced newspaper. It seems to be the equivalent of the National Enquirer. I’d take that description with a few lumps of salt. How could “the authorities” determine that “Bettina” was solely responsible for his death?
Okay, it’s bad enough he died of a spider bite. But to live in a zoo of reptiles and insects and have them eat his body after he died…they’re aren’t enough :eek:
I suppose they could determine it was black widow venom that killed him, and if Bettina was the only black widow then there you go.
Still, I hope it’s not true. Ye gods, can you imagine being the first responder to that scene and having to figure out how to clear away all the lizards and snakes and tarantulas in order to recover the body?
Auugghhhh [squick-shudder-twitch]. I have to stop thinking about it but I can’t. I’ll see it in my dreams tonight.
Aeeeeeeeeeeuuw. I don’t really have a problem with spiders and so on, but that’s simply… aaargh.
None of which makes me happier that some woman may have just released a load of Australian redbacks into my local area from a packing case shipped from Oz…
ETA: Contrapuntal, The Sun, while extremely prurient and not the greatest adherent to journalistic integrity, is actually a real newspaper, and despite its low quality has considerably more integrity than the National Enquirer.
Black Widows generally aren’t fatal. Geckos are generally insectivores - I’d think they’d have eaten the termites before they started on the body. I think most spiders eat only live prey, you have to fool them to get them to eat just meat.
It all seems a bit…unlikely.
Now that can happen. I’ve had my snakes bite me when they thought I was food (due to my own stupidity).
A) The post-mortem has not been carried out yet.
B) The odds are overwhelmingly against it.
http://ladywildlife.com/animal/blackwidowspider.html
If you don’t want to slog through all that, suffice it to say no deaths have been reported in the US since 1983, one was reported in Spain (2001) and Greece (2003.)
The bottom line is that the spider does not inject enough venom to be fatal to humans in the vast majority of cases.
ETA: Thanks. jjim.
I didn’t read the linked article. And this
convinces me I made the right choice.
That article just gets weirder and weirder. Are we sure he didn’t just have a heart attack? And I know my gecko doesn’t eat human flesh. Or any kind of flesh.
But who actually keeps a black widow…?
Under no circumstances do the words “pet” and “spider” belong in the same sentence.
From the article:
“Larger pieces of flesh torn off by the lizards were scooped up and taken back to the webs of tarantulas and other bird-eating spiders”
:::::shudder:::::
Nothing like cozying up on the couch on a lazy Sunday afternoon with your “pet” black widow and your “pet” gila monster.
Yeah, that’s a bad way to go but it sounds like he was probably dead before the bugs began their feast. But worst way to go still has to be the person who drowned in the liquid manure tank.
I wonder if they’ll find out that he had a heart attack or something unrelated to the critters before they even escaped and they had nothing to do with it?