Missouri Suburban House Filled with 6,000 Brown Recluse Spiders
A Missouri family has been driven out of their home after thousands of venomous brown recluse spiders invaded the residence.
The family vacated the house and it was fumigated in an attempt to exterminate the poisonous arachnids.
The Trost family bought the house, located in the suburban town of Weldon Spring, Missouri, back in 2007, according to the Associated Press. At $450,000, the house owners assumed nothing might be wrong with the house, except perhaps a leaky faucet somewhere, but that was not the case.
The house, which overlooks a golf course, was replete with poisonous brown recluse spiders. Susan Trost said once, as she showered, a spider fell from the ceiling and into the drain. By 2012, the family told a St. Louis news station that the spiders "started bleeding out of the walls."
The Trosts filed a claim with their insurer, State Farm, and then sued the previous owners for not disclosing the arachnid infestation. In 2011, during the civil trial, University of Kansas biology professor Jamel Sandidge estimated there were between 4,500 to 6,000 spiders in the house.
At the end of the civil trial, the jury decided to award the Trosts $472,000 but it was not enough to keep the couple from filing bankruptcy and they moved out in 2012. State Farm also never paid the family for the issue.
According to KTLA, the family had to pay $100,000 in legal fees as well as an estimated $14,000 to exterminate the spiders. The house, now in foreclosure, was covered in tarps and was pumped full of poisonous gas to try and kill the spiders.
"Many times people bring them in, you can move from a house that has them. You buy things at an auction, you have furniture in storage, many times brown recluse spiders are carried right into the house," said Tim McCarthy with McCarthy Pest and Termite Control, who is conducting the extermination, reports KMOV.
The bite of brown recluse can cause extreme pain as well as skin necrosis, according to University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources website.
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