PixabayPolice were alerted to a man’s screams from inside his house, after passers-by heard him shouting ‘why won’t you die’ repeatedly.
I’m guessing the people walking past his house were concerned by the worrying statement, but the whole thing was far less sinister than originally thought.
Why? Because it turned out the man had an ‘extreme fear’ of spiders, and was actually screaming at an unwelcome house guest at the time.
As reported by The Guardian, police in Western Australia confirmed they sent a full police response to the emergency call this morning (January 2).
Concerned passers-by were walking by the property in suburban Perth when they heard the man shouting, along with a toddler screaming, and so decided to call the emergency services.
Upon arrival, police found the man in question ‘trying to kill’ a spider inside his home, at which point he apologised for having an extreme fear of arachnids.
A police log of the incident was filed, with a screenshot of it being posted by the Wanneroo police on their Twitter account this morning.
The tweet has since been deleted, however the log read:
CALLER WALKED PAST THE AA AND HEARD A MALE SCREAMING OUT – WHY DONT YOU DIE, REPEATEDLY [sic]
THE TODDLER INSIDE WAS SCREAMING BUT THE CALLER DIDNT HEAR THE FEMALE WHO LIVES THERE SAYING ANYTHING [sic]
CALLER DOESNT NOW THEM, BUT HAS SEEN THEM A FEW TIMES WHEN WALKING [sic]
The log was apparently updated around 15 minutes later, when officers on the scene provided an update. It advised that police spoke with everyone involved, and had come to the conclusion the man had ‘only been trying to kill a spider’.
The man apologised to police for the inconvenience, explaining he has a ‘serious fear’ of spiders – hence his extreme response to one being in his home.
The log then read:
NO INJURIES SIGHTED (EXCEPT TO SPIDER) NO FURTHER POLICE INVOLVEMENT REQUIRED [sic]
An officer at Wanneroo police station confirmed to The Guardian Australia the incident had happened, but declined to provide further comment.
With regards to the deleted tweet, a spokesperson for Western Australia police said it’d only been deleted because it included the screenshot of police communications which should have been transcribed in a separate post.
As reported by The Guardian, he said:
There’s nothing actually wrong with the contents of it. There were just some typos in it, things like that.
PixabayAnd perhaps the man had good reason to be worried because research has found, if spiders worked together, they could eat all humans in just one year. Yikes.
The research, carried out by European biologists Martin Nyffeler and Klaus Birkhofer, investigated how much spiders eat in a year, with The Washington Post reporting the research found spiders actually consume more meat than all adult humans combined.
In fact, the total biomass of all adult humans on Earth is estimated to be 287 million tonnes – and even accounting for the 70 million tonnes of kids about, it still falls short of the total amount spiders eat in a year.
This is because spiders consume anywhere between 400 million and 800 million tonnes of prey in any given year.
Which means, if all the spiders – from those big-uns in Lord Of The Rings and Harry Potter, to those little ones in Arachnophobia and Spider-Man – teamed up and decided to eat all of humanity, they easily could.
Should we get the police involved in this, do you reckon? ‘Cause I really think we should…
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A Broadcast Journalism Masters graduate who went on to achieve an NCTJ level 3 Diploma in Journalism, Lucy has done stints at ITV, BBC Inside Out and Key 103. While working as a journalist for UNILAD, Lucy has reported on breaking news stories while also writing features about mental health, cervical screening awareness, and Little Mix (who she is unapologetically obsessed with).