This is the creepy moment a poisonous spider is discovered lurking in a toddler’s Duplo during recess.
Rowan Blair was at home in Melbourne, Australia, when a scream from another room sparked him into action.
He said: ‘My wife had our 18-month-old daughter on her lap, and she had just knocked the big box of Duplo onto the floor before screaming in fear.
‘I ran into the bedroom, my daughter was sitting in a big chair and was scared, probably more because of my wife’s scream than the spider.
‘She was saying “ask, don’t touch,” which is a modification of the mantra we use at home: “look, but don’t touch.”
This is the creepy moment a poisonous spider is discovered lurking in a toddler’s Duplo during recess.
Mr Blair believed it was a white-tailed spider, a venomous species whose bite can cause burning blisters and occasionally nausea, vomiting and headaches.
‘My wife had gone to get some tissues and when she returned and I had arrived, the spider was nowhere to be seen.
‘We had to turn each block over individually and then place it back in the box until we discovered the piece the spider was hiding in.’
Mr Blair, 40, grabbed his camera and took some pictures of the intruder.
I thought it was a white-tailed spider, a venomous species whose bite can cause burning blisters and occasionally nausea, vomiting and headaches.
Their bites also have a highly controversial reputation for causing necrosis, where skin tissue dies.
Sharing a photo with a spider identification page on Facebook, Rowan’s suspicions were confirmed.
He said: ‘My initial instinct was that it was a Badumna or black house spider.
‘We have quite a few of them on the outside of the house, high up in the corners of the eaves, but I haven’t seen them inside.
“It was only when I looked more closely that I realised it was actually a lampona, a white-tailed spider, because it has a much longer and thinner body.”
He added: “I would rather move than kill, however my wife moved quickly and squashed the spider before I had the chance.”
Sharing a photo with a spider identification page on Facebook, Rowan’s suspicions were confirmed.
White-tailed spiders have a dark reddish to gray, cigar-shaped body and dark orange-brown banded legs.
Although the Blairs are used to seeing spiders, the close encounter has shaken them.
Rowan said: ‘As the spider was quite large and surprised my family, it definitely made us a little nervous in the 24 hours since then.
‘We will do a deep cleaning of that area of the house: the children’s play area.
‘But my wife and I agree that we live in Australia, there are spiders everywhere and nine times out of ten we will relocate them if possible.
“If we see them as a potential threat to our young children, then I feel comfortable dismissing them.”
The belief that white-tailed spider bites can cause skin ulcers and necrosis “has been around for decades,” according to the University of Melbourne’s School of Biomedical Sciences.
In a profile of the species, the university acknowledged a “small number of cases of significant tissue loss” resulting from witnessed white-tailed spider bites.
But he stressed that most of the reported cases “are based, at best, on circumstantial evidence.”
He also cited a 2003 study that found no necrotic ulcers among 130 patients with white-tailed spider bites.