A man has burned down his apartment while trying to kill a ‘huge Wolf spider’ with fire.
In his attempt to kill it, the guy reportedly used a torch lighter on Sunday (7 January) but the burning spider caused a fire at the California apartment, which meant residents in the same block were forced to leave.
According to AJC, the spider caught fire and scuttled to a nearby mattress which set alight.
According to Battalion Chief, Rob Pitt, he said the fire caused moderate damage to the Redding, California, apartment when one of the residents tried to burn a spider to kill it.
Lyndsey Wisegarver, a caregiver for one of the residents, said one of the men who lives in the apartment used the torch lighter to kill the spider, which was in an upstairs bedroom.
Adding:
It was a huge wolf spider.
Lyndsey said firefighters were able to extinguish the fire on the mattress, but it quickly spread to a flag collection and drapes in the bedroom.
People living at the apartment block attempted to put the fire out with a garden hose but were unsuccessful, according to fire officials, while caused about $11,000 worth of damage.
Battalion Chief Rob Pitt said the fire also spread to a closet in the bedroom, but firefighters were able to keep it from getting into the attic or neighbouring apartments:
All the residents escaped from the building and no one was injured. The fire was extinguished within 20 minutes.
A torch lighter is similar to a regular cigarette lighter but is larger and the flame is under more pressure. As for Wisegarver and the two men living in the apartment, they are going to have to find another place to live. The unit they were living in is uninhabitable.
If you’re one of those people who has a phobia of spiders, you’re ‘more likely’ to see them, according to research.
When I say ‘one of those people’, chances are it’s likely.
Yeah ok, I get it, they’re more afraid of us than we are of them, but it doesn’t help curb the fear does it?
According to LiveScience, reserachers wanted to analyse the details which automatically most attract people’s attention – for example, if there’s a spider in the room, those who are most spider-fearing, will likely be the ‘first to point it out’.
Past research has suggested this happens because our attention systems are ‘hardwired to notice threats’, but other research suggested our attention is simply drawn to details we find most important on a personal level.
Behavioural psychologist Helena Purkis from the University of Queensland in Australia along with colleagues at the University of Sussex in the UK, compared how much attention was paid ‘not only to pictures of spiders, but also images taken from Doctor Who‘.
Ms Purkis said:
The idea is that in any environment, attention will be allocated in order of priority to the most important stimuli first, so that these can be processed and responded to.
Things that are very loud or bright automatically grab our attention. We are interested in whether other, less intense stimuli that are nonetheless salient can automatically draw attention. This tells us about the way the brain prioritises the stimuli in our environment.
Forget trying to get close enough to set fire to it (which I wouldn’t do anyway, because it’s cruel), I’d have probably gone with the option of running away and never returning.
