Family haunted by thousands of brown recluse spiders
The nightmare of a St. Louis-area family isn't over yet.
Two years ago, they abandoned their home because of some unwanted tenants: Several thousand venomous brown recluse spiders.
Last week, a pest-control service covered the entire house with a colorful tarp to saturate the insides with deadly sulfuryl fluoride gas, chilled to 67 degrees below zero, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Supposedly, the stuff wipes out all the eggs as well.
Brian and Susan Trost bought the place for $450,000 in 2007, and were soon discovering structural defects as well as creepy critters. The Post-Dispatch describes:
In the following days, she saw spiders and their webs every day. They were in the mini blinds, the air registers, the pantry ceiling, the fireplace. Their exoskeletons were falling from the can lights. Once when she was showering, she dodged a spider as it fell from the ceiling and washed down the drain.
She heard her 4-year-old scream and found a half-dollar-size spider near his foot.
Normal extermination attempts failed.
They sued and a jury awarded $412,000 three years ago. A University of Kansas biology professor gave estimates of up to 6,000 spiders hiding in the walls. After the trial, the infestation got worse, and the Trosts abandoned the property.
See "Freak-out photo of great white shark shot by caged S. Jersey teacher"
But the Trosts have never collected, because of insurance company resistance and the defendants declaring bankuptcy.
Fannie Mae put up the money for the new effort to sterilize the property, preparing it for sale.
Believe it or not, people have coexisted with infestations of brown recluses, which rarely bite humans (though putting on old clothes without a thorough checking can be a bad idea). No fatal bite has ever been proven, several sources say.
In 2001, more than 2,000 brown recluses were collected in a Lenexa, Kansas, home. No one was bitten.
"Overdiagnosis of brown recluse bites is a nationwide problem," according to a University of California, Riverside, study.
Contact staff writer Peter Mucha at 215-854-4342 or pmucha@phillynews.com. Follow @petemucha on Twitter.