Guy Tries To Kill Spider With Blowtorch, Accidentally Burns House Down

KVOA/Ciar/Wikimedia

Arachnophobes, assemble! Here’s how not to rid your home of an unwanted eight-legged critter. 

We’ve all been there. Despite protests from your dad, who claims ‘they keep the flies away’ or cries of cruelty from your in-house animal-lover – when most of us see a spider in the bathroom or creeping up the wall, we want rid.

But one man, who burnt his house down trying to obliterate spider-kind, took things too far:

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The suspected arachnophobic fool used a propane torch to kill spiders and burn spider webs underneath his mobile home.

Needless to say his not-so ingenious plan and mild overreaction resulted in the webs catching fire and a colossal blaze, resulting in his own mobile home setting alight.

Tucson Fire Department responded to a 911 call at around 9:19 p.m. reporting smoke and flames coming from a mobile home in the 4000 Block of East Blacklidge Drive, near North Alvernon Way and East Fort Lowell Road, reports KVOA.

KVOA

The unidentified man is now suspected by authorities of starting the blaze which forced him as well as an elderly woman out of their home on Sunday night and took nearly two dozen firefighters, eleven minutes to extinguish.

When firefighters arrived, they say an elderly woman had been carried out of the burning home by her son and neighbors.

The woman suffered minor injuries sustained from being carried out – which is why you don’t bring a flamethrower to a knife battle, people.

Jon Richfield/Wikimedia

In this stand-off between man and Mother Nature, no one came out on top, particularly the two civilians, including the perpetrator of this senseless spider attack, who are now left homeless and are being aided by The Red Cross because their mobile home has been burnt to a crisp through and through.

Although most of us don’t like the idea of being interrupted in the shower by a big-eyed, pincer-waving creepy crawly, surely we can all learn to share the same space under one roof and live in perfect harmony without resorting to ill-thought-out attempts at eradicating all the spiders?

Then again, if I was 19-year-old Lydia from Yorkshire, I might feel differently?

The young women presumed a grey-ish mound in the corner of her room was merely a dust cluster but was in for the fright of her life, when it began to move and shape-shift to reveal its true form: An absolutely, outrageously big spider.

Speaking to UNILAD, Lydia wove together the threads of this creepy yarn:

I was just in my room the other night and was moving some boxes from some shelves I don’t really go near as I’m moving away to uni on Tuesday, when I noticed what I thought was a clump of dust in the corner.

I didn’t have my glasses on at the time so I hadn’t realised what it was. Once I did it was like being in a nightmare, obviously I straight away had to get my dad to get rid of them!

Lyd rallied her father to help. That’s how it’s done.

Failing that, just run. Run far, for love of God.

Francesca Donovan

A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.