Written 2 weeks ago by Angel Croitor

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A challenger in the eight-legged little nightmares league is set to be the new champion of Ireland as they beat up our native spiders.

So why should you care? It’s a spider-beat-spider world, right? Well you should because at least our native spiders aren’t venomous. Kieran Lambert from Lambert’s Pest Control in Mullingar informs Midlands Today with Will Faulkner about this tiny little terror.

“These spiders originate from the Canary Islands which are obviously very warm temperatures – and with people’s houses so warm – 20 years ago if they came in they probably would’ve died of because they couldn’t handle the cold – where as now your house is nearly 20 degrees all year round – they’re just living and breathing and taking out our own spiders.”

Kieran tells us that the False Widow is the same as any other spider we are bound to come across except their much larger – the size of your thumbnail. Well don’t we all look like a bunch of softies sweating buckets at the images all over the papers. Hold on just a minute because there is something to be aware of when it comes to the False Widow.

“They’re not life threatening – they’re very similar to a wasp sting – it depends on yourself and how you handle a wasp sting – you could go into anaphylactic shock.”

The False Widow is not the most toxic creepy crawly on the block – that infamy is still left to the Daddy Long Legs. Luckily – their teeth cannot penetrate skin so we’re all safe until they decide they’ve had enough of us and speed up evolution.

We won’t try and scare you by telling you that as Ireland’s weather grows warmer and warmer with each year we may see more venomous strains of creepy crawlies coming into our country – until then make peace with the False Widow because it’s here to stay.

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