GAH!

[theweaselking]

Man killed by pet spider, eaten by his other reptilian and insectoid pets.

Comments

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

..........

Strangely, I won't be having nightmares about this, because guess who would never ever ever ever consider keeping black widows as pets and thousands of termites, voluntarily, even as "pet" snacks?

[stormfeather.livejournal.com]

Man, I can't imagine what some of your readers are doing right now. I'm not arachnophobic, but even I'm twitching over some of that...

rant

[singingnettle.livejournal.com]

I worked in a herpetology lab for three years and I don't believe this. Someone's exaggerating. He might have died of an allergic reaction to a black-widow bite--black widows are hardly ever fatal to adults. (I was bitten last summer, and it was not pleasant but not that big a deal...and I am immunocompromised, to boot.) But as for the other things the officers said they saw...tarantualas don't build webs, termites are not carnivorous--they don't have the enzymes to digest meat--snakes are not scavengers and eat only things they can swallow whole, and spiders don't hang pre-dead meat in their webs. (If a body were decaying, I suppose they might suck the fluids--but they'd be a lot more likely to just catch the termites.)

I suppose it's possible that a snake could eat a finger or limb that had already fallen off the body, but snakes don't eat decaying meat--it would fatally poison them because they digest food so slowly. They can go for long, long periods of time without eating and would be much more likely to do that than eat spoiled meat. What the animals might be more likely to do would be to sip at body fluids if they were desperate for water.

I can believe that a spider might have laid eggs in body cavities. And yeah, a gecko will eat anything, including a dead owner. Most animals seem to stop recognizing buddies as individuals as soon as they die--which makes sense if you have to clear a dead buddy or relative out of your nest and the most efficient way to do it is to eat it. (I always find it a little freaky when one of my pets will eat a dead former friend and then frantically look for that animal for days afterward.)

I will bet that an autopsy shows that he died of a heart attack or something.

Sure sounds like the officers almost did, and I bet that would have colored their perception a bit.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

I'm not clicking until I can get a warning description of any pictures on that page.

[kookiemaster.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I also tought that a Black Widow wouldn't kill an adult human ... and termites ... don't they just eat plant matter.

That being said, if you are dumb enough to keep an animal who can easily kill you (poisonous, huge constrictors, large felines, etc.) you're just asking for something to happen. Zoos yes, pets in your living room, no. With any luck, the guy didn't have time to reproduce.

[dorothy-parka.livejournal.com]

THEY KNOW THE SPIDER'S NAME???? I guess Bettina had it in for Mark.

That really was a super-awesome story. I love the tarantula building a nest in a ceiling corner! that's one freaky tarantula. she's kinky.

[chaosrah.livejournal.com]

No. Fucking. Way.

[chaosrah.livejournal.com]

Oh, btw, any poisonous frogs would be harmless in captivity. I used to keep them, there is no way I would have kept them if they were poisonous in captivity. They lose their toxicity within 3-6 months of living in captivity, so even if he obtained them wild caught, they wouldn't be toxic, assuming he had them for at least that long.

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

Well, as various people have pointed out, this is obviously a hoax. Being on a first name with the pets of a guy who never invited people home. Meat-eating termites. Lock-picking insects and lizards. The list just goes on and on. This is a classic hoax, but one that is bound to sell like hot coffee in Niflheim.