Lucky for me, this particular museum isn't in the states, but in Finland. Good for me, but not so good for folks and tourist visiting the museum there. Still, I'm pretty sure I don't want to go to a place that has 4 inch spiders roaming the halls!
The Finnish Museum Infested With Gigantic Spiders
Photo credit: Skorpion87/Wikimedia
A grand old building in the heart of Helsinki, Finland’s Natural History Museum is one of the capital’s premier tourist attractions. It’s also a place where no arachnophobe should ever set foot. The building is home to a gigantic colony of extremely venomous, near-immortal super-spiders.
Known as the Chilean recluse spider, the creatures are normally only found in South America. Unfortunately for Finland, some eggs made their way into a shipment of wood chips the museum ordered in the 1960s. They hatched, and the spiders escaped into the museum. By 1970, the place was overrun with them. In 2016, they’re not only still there—there are more of them than ever.
The trouble is that the Chilean recluse spider is almost indestructible. Females have been known to survive without food or water for 755 days. They can deal with extreme temperature changes and can lay up to 2,250 eggs in a lifetime. As an added bit of freaky detail, they can grow to up to 10 centimeters (4 in), and their bite will leave you howling in agony (if it doesn’t kill you outright).
On the plus side, the recluse spider gets its name by hiding away from humans. In the 50-plus years the museum has been infested, only one bite has ever been recorded. This is extremely good news, as the museum is built above a series of tunnels linking many buildings in Helsinki. The BBC has speculated that it’s only a matter of time before the colony expands outward into other parts of the city center . . . if it hasn’t done so already.
Ya know...this sounds like something right out of a bad horror story. After all, few things are more creepy to me than spiders, especially when they are about 4 inches long!
Coffee inside this morning. The rain is coming back to finish the flooding job it started yesterday. Had about 7 inches in some places.
