Australian police react to ‘death’ shouts, find dead spider

New South Wales’s police said officers raced to the apartment in the harbour-side suburb of Wollstonecraft last Saturday after reports of a violent domestic dispute between a man and a woman. Neighbours reported a woman screaming hysterically, a man yelling “I’m going to kill you, you’re dead! Die, Die” and sounds of furniture being tossed around. “Numerous police cars responded to the address and began banging on the door,” Harbourside Local Area Command said on their Facebook page.

A man aged in his 30s, out of breath and flushed, came to the door and was immediately asked where his wife or girlfriend was. “Umm, I don’t have one,” he answered. When police explained they had reports of a domestic and a woman screaming, he replied: “I don’t know what you’re talking about, I live alone”. Pressed about the threats to kill, the man became sheepish and even apologetic as it emerged what had caused the ruckus.

“It was a spider, a really big one!!,” he said, admitting he was chasing the large arachnid around his apartment with a can of insect spray. Asked about the woman screaming, he replied: “Yeah, sorry, that was me, I really hate spiders.” 

Australia is home to a startling number of the world’s deadliest creatures, including snakes, spiders, jellyfish and octopuses. Funnel-web spiders are particularly feared because their bite can be fatal, although there have been no deaths since an anti-venom was developed in the 1980s.