It's an arachnophobic's worst nightmare.
A home overlooking the Whitmoor Country Club in Missouri has been abandoned after between 4,500 and 6,000 brown recluse spiders infested the premises, The Consumerist reported on Friday.
After years of failed pesticide treatments, Brian and Susan Trost, the disenfranchized owners, decided to split from the 2,400-square-foot ranch home. No one seemed to want to move in with its past, and since it hasn't been sold, the property will enter foreclosure, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on Thursday. To this day, exterminators blast the spiders and their eggs with hundreds of pounds of sulfuryl fluoride gas at a temperature of 67 degrees below zero.
The spiders began to take over the home in droves in October 2007, shortly after the couple moved in. They bought the roughly 20-year-old home for $450,000.
On her first day at the house, Susan Trost said she noticed a giant web on one of the light fixtures that hadn't been there when she toured the house originally. She thought the home just needed a top-to-bottom cleaning.
As time went on, the couple and their four children came to realize that the home was infested. She found them in virtually every nook and cranny in the house, and even had a spider fall on her when she was in the shower. She described the infestation as "bleeding through the wall," according to the Daily Mail.
Brown recluse spiders can inflict a bite that can cause pain, swelling, nausea, itching and organ failure or death in severe cases. One of the spiders the couple captured was the size of a dollar bill.
Neighbors of the house have not reported an infestation in their homes, and often times there is no clear-cut reason why they prefer one home over another.
But the couple is biting back. They filed a civil lawsuit in 2008 against the previous owners for not telling them about the problem. The jury sided with the couple and they were awarded $472,000.