Man Stumbles Upon Black Widow With Whole Mouse in Web: 'Crime Scene'

One man's terrifying discovery has rocked the internet this week after he shared a now-viral picture on the popular site Reddit.

On Sunday, the user posted a picture from Hochatown, Oklahoma, of a black widow spider that had caught a large mouse in its web, with the caption: "Almost walked face first into this." The post has since received more than 50,000 upvotes and thousands of comments.

The most poisonous spider in North America, the black widow's venom is 15 times stronger than the rattlesnake's. Amazingly, the notorious predators are known for attacking and killing prey much larger than themselves. Not only have they been known to attack rodents, but more often than not, they win too.

Often the arachnids use their silk to fight larger animals, including rodents—mostly because creating venom requires a large amount of energy. Once trapped, they will wait for them to die before consuming their prey.

The poster told Newsweek: "I've been losing chickens to a possum and had set up a trap to try and catch it. I went to the trap at night and peeked in the coup. I always have my flashlight on me, thankfully, and was about to turn the corner in the coup when I saw this crime scene."

Unsurprisingly, his first reaction was of total panic: "I was like 'burn it all down,' and then I was like, 'No, must share with Reddit. Sweet sweet karma awaits me.' So I got a few pictures, knowing I'd never seen any spider ever kill a mouse or have one in its web."

Shocked by the image, Reddit users rushed to the comments to share their reactions:

"That's a real overachiever you got there bud," said one commenter on the viral image. While another Redditor wrote: "That spider must be cooking for a thousand friends."

"Aaaaaand my fear for spiders is back," said another reply: "Mega thanks."

One commenter said: "It almost looks like a very weird art installation," while another said: "Burn the house down. Just burn it!"

"That's definitely the largest black widow I've ever seen," said the Redditor: "Its abdomen being roughly the size of a nickel to a quarter. Rarely do I kill spiders or anything for that matter. I went back inside and posted and went to bed."

The next morning, the man woke up to check the trap again when he found that both the spider and the mouse were gone. By this time though, the picture was taking off online: "I'm on Reddit every day, it's the front and back page of the internet and I knew it would be the perfect place to embed nightmares into the masses," he explained.

"There was nothing stopping you from keeping this to yourself," joked one commenter on the viral post. Another viewer of the nightmarish image said: "That's a yikes for me dawg."