A car enthusiast who bought a classic American Ford got more than he bargained for after he found a family of deadly Black Widow spiders living in it.
Grazeley resident Marc Lang, 57, bought the car on auction site eBay and picked it up from the vendor in Barking, Essex.
What he didn’t realise was that the classic fifties Thunderbird had previously been imported from Mexico, the likely origin of the venomous hitchhikers.
“The car has been here I believe since July and was imported from Mexico. I bought it a couple of weeks ago and upon examining it last weekend I found some foreign spiders,” said Lang.
“Having a reasonably healthy regard for things I don’t understand, and especially if they could be poisonous, I carefully captured one.”
After finding a nest behind one of the car’s rusted hubcaps, Marc showed his new pet to his boss, who correctly identified it as a Black Widow.
He later contacted the Environment Agency, which merely said the spiders were not on the list of exotic creatures which need to be reported. Marc then got in touch with Bristol Zoo, which was very interested in taking the pregnant female specimen he had captured.
Marc is now trying to rid his new wheels of any remaining spiders, of which he knows there are two for certain.
“The car’s in a building in the country and I’m still working on it and will carry on removing eggs and, hopefully, I will be able to capture the two males I’ve seen which have so far been evasive,” he said.
While it’s often hard to discover all of the secrets a used car can hold, you can at least minimise your chances of it being infested with poisonous spiders by selecting a UK car from our classifieds here.
Picture: Fotolia
