Upon returning home from a three-week cruise, Geoff Barnes made a shocking discovery. Not only had he tested positive for COVID—which is never fun at the best of times—but his room was colonized by a small army of spiders.
"I was just relaxing in bed watching TV when I noticed some insects crawling across my bed," Barnes told Newsweek. "I leaped out of bed in a rather startled state. I was shocked when I looked beside the bed and saw dozens of spiders on the wall around the power socket all moving around randomly."
Barnes—who lives in New South Wales, Australia—thought at first that the spiders might simply be a figment of his fever-filled imagination. "On closer inspection, I saw that some were emerging from the plug holes in the powerpoint, so I took some photos to prove I wasn't seeing things," he said.
Barnes shared the photos to the Facebook page Australian Spider Identification on May 11 in a post that has received hundreds of likes and comments. "Invasion of baby spiders emerging from a power point right next to my bed," he wrote.
"I would move out. Spiders can have it all," commented one user.
"New fear unlocked. Fantastic," said another.
According to the group, the incy wincy invaders look to be either huntsmen or wolf spiders, both of which are harmless to humans. "To me they look like smaller versions of the common huntsman Spider, which I have seen in the house from time to time," Barnes said. "Huntsmans can be very large and intimidating but are apparently mostly harmless."
Female huntsman spiders can lay up to 200 eggs in a single breeding season and will often seek shelter in the nooks and crannies of human homes.
Not wanting to kill the spiders, Barnes came up with a plan for how to get them out of his bedroom. "Using a brush just made them scurry around the wall and was not a solution so I quickly gave up that," he said. "I eventually used a hand-held vacuum with a mesh bag over the end to suck up as many as I could, then moved them outside so they could find a new home.
"I am still seeing some of these spiders in my bedroom and bathroom, so I haven't gotten rid of them all, but I am not too concerned as long as they don't appear in large numbers again!"
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Pandora Dewan is a Senior Science Reporter at Newsweek based in London, UK. Her focus is reporting on science, health ... Read more
To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here.
