The Eight Legged Stuff Of Nightmares

Its a classic B Movie plot. Giant spiders invade a town. They are everywhere, and they are . . . hungry. Except its really happening today in the Outback. A small town in Austrailia is being overrun by huge tarantulas, known as bird eating spiders. Ok, maybe the picture above is a bit of dramatic license, but this one . . .



. . . Well, perhaps that one's photoshopped.

At any rate, here's the story:

Australia is known around the world for its large and deadly creepy crawlies, but even locals have been shocked by the size of the giant venomous spiders that have invaded an Outback town in Queensland.

Scores of eastern tarantulas, which are known as “bird-eating spiders” . . . have begun crawling out from gardens and venturing into public spaces in Bowen, a coastal town about 700 miles northwest of Brisbane.

Earlier this week locals spotted an Australian tarantula wandering towards a public garden in the centre of town where people often sit for lunch. They called in a pest controller, but not before using a can of insect spray to paralyse the spider.

Audy Geiszler, who runs Amalgamated Pest Control in Bowen, said that the spider was a large male with powerful long fangs and was so big that when he placed it – dead – in the palm of his hand its legs hung over his fingers.

Mr Geiszler said that he had been inundated with calls from worried locals reporting sightings of the giant tarantulas, which have been pushed out of their natural habitat over the past month by heavy, unseasonal rain.

. . . The eastern tarantulas are venomous and can grow up to 6cm (2.4in) long with a leg span of 16cm (6.3in). Despite their common name, they do not eat birds, but can kill a dog with one bite, and make a human very sick. . . .

Read the entire article.

And this pic, not photoshopped, will give you an idea of how big these things really can get.



[shiver]