Family Flees 6,000 Deadly Spiders "Bleeding Out of the Walls" of Home
Spiders falling from the ceiling. Spiders behind every mini blind. Spiders in the fireplace. Spiders "bleeding out of the walls." A family in Missouri finally had enough of this nightmare and vacated the home they were sharing with 6,000 brown recluse spiders—but will the spiders ever leave?
Brian and Susan Trost bought the Weldon Spring hell house in 2007, completely unaware of the abundant, venomous creepy crawlies who, they say, had already set up shop.
In a lawsuit against the home's former owners—who the Trosts claim failed to disclose the spider problem, as well as several other (I'm assuming) non-Satan related issues—Susan claimed she didn't notice the spiders or their webs on the walk-through date. It wasn't until her first day as owner that she realized, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "a large, stringy web wrapped around one of the light fixtures."
From there, she pieced together the the reality of her spider hell slowly: a spider behind some loose wallpaper here, a spider in the basement there. From the Post-Dispatch:
In the following days, she saw spiders and their webs every day. They were in the mini blinds, the air registers, the pantry ceiling, the fireplace. Their exoskeletons were falling from the can lights. Once when she was showering, she dodged a spider as it fell from the ceiling and washed down the drain.
"It was shortly after we moved in they started bleeding out of the walls," Susan told KMOV. A professor at the University of Kansas estimated that, during the less-active winter months, there were between 4,500 and 6,000 of them.
After numerous, failed experiences with pest control companies, and denied claims from their insurance company—an ongoing battle, reports the Post-Dispatch—the Trosts eventually surrendered their home to the spiders.
The home, now owned by Fannie Mae (and, clearly, the spiders), is being tented and fumigated this week. The sulfuryl fluoride gas is expected to kill both the spiders and their eggs.
Tim McCarthy, president of McCarthy Pest Control, told the Post-Dispatch, "There'll be nothing alive in there after this."
Be careful what you wish for, Tim.
