Grrrr, sensationalist newspaper articles

This appeared yesterday in a national UK paper....

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"Pet spider kills its owner.

From ALLAN HALL
in Berlin

A MAN who lived in his own “zoo” of lizards and insects was fatally bitten by a pet black widow spider — then eaten by the other creepy-crawlies.
Police broke in to Mark Voegel’s apartment to find spider Bettina along with 200 others, several snakes, a gecko lizard called Helmut and several thousand termites had gorged on his body.

Neighbours alerted police after becoming alarmed by the stink.

And horrified officers were met by a nightmare scene.

A police spokesman said: “It was like a horror movie. His corpse was over the sofa.

“Giant webs draped him, spiders were all over him. They were coming out of his nose and his mouth.

“There was everything there one could imagine in the world of reptiles.

“Larger pieces of flesh torn off by the lizards were scooped up and taken back to the webs of tarantulas and other bird-eating spiders.”

Loner Voegel, 30, never invited people back to his “jungle” home, a small apartment in the German city of Dortmund.

Police described it as a cross between a botanical garden and the butterfly breeding ground in the serial killer movie The Silence Of The Lambs.

One tarantula had built a nest the size of a swallow’s in a corner of the ceiling.

Voegel also had a boa constrictor and several poisonous frogs from South America.

Spider expert and animal cruelty officer Gabi Bayer said he kept creatures “that should never be allowed in a private home”.

She said: “He had spiders so aggressive they are the equivalent of a pit-bull in the animal world.”

The reptiles were allowed to roam free in the flat.

The heating elements on two tanks containing spiders and their termite snacks had exploded and dislodged the metal tops allowing them to escape.

Voegel is thought to have been dead for between seven and 14 days.

A post-mortem will be carried out in the next few days. But authorities believe Bettina alone was responsible for Voegel’s death."

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Here's the link...

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2004092008,00.html

Now admittedly the guy sounds like a class A eejit bringing exactly the kind of publicity the hobby doesn't need, but what really gets my goat about this piece is that it says he had snakes (the only one mentioned specifically in the report is a Boa Constrictor), but at the bottom of the article is a pic of a cobra with the heading 'Danger...he kept snakes.' Sheesh!!!! That makes a heck of a lot of dangerous people around, with our dangerous snakes. No where is there mention of a venomous snake...okay, so the spiders were and the frogs were poisonous but according to this article all snakes appear to be dangerous regardless of the species....sigh.

Anyway, rant over.

Stubby

Hardly surprising that The Sun would be sensationalizing anything, but it is a shame that they used that cobra picture. I would be interested what specieis of spiders he actually kept. Although he apparently died from envomation from a black widow, the one "expert" cited said that the deceased had spiders that no home should have. Since, at least in the U.S., millions of homes have black widows in them, I wonder what types of spiders might be referrenced there.

Here in the Ozark Mts., something along the lines of 95% of all homes are estimated to have the Brown Recluse living in them. It's just a way of life for most of us to shake out our shoes/boots before putting them on in the morning.

I wonder if this guy had trapdoor spiders of some variety? The meanest animal I EVER saw was a trapdoor spider a friend of mine had. That crazy thing would jump out and try to stab you through the glass of its tank with BIG fangs, just dripping venom!

Any further ideas on that story?

Got to agree with you on 'The Sun'. News only ever appears in that paper by accident.

The incident happened in Germany so poisonous spiders won't be the norm. Like here in the UK its pretty boring as far as local venomous animals go, so the spiders would have been more of a big deal I guess, unlike you folks who have them living in with you I can't help wondering what spider exactly qualifies as the 'pitbull' of the spider world though.

Stubby

I'm wondering how they determined that it was a black widow bite that killed him prior to an autopsy.

Black widows CAN kill, but, unlike in the movie "Arachnaphobia", you don't drop dead 2 seconds after the envenomation.

I'm not familiar with The Sun.....is it the equivalent to The Enquirer, or does it have more credibility? In other words, is there a chance it never happened?

The Sun is probably the journalistic equivalent to the Enquirer, but on steriods.

Its not quite at 'Enquirer' level, I'd be pretty confident it happened - but also pretty confident that they've sensationalised it a great deal.

From the description of the condition he was in when found I'm surprised they could tell what killed him. I mean, it could just have easily been a heart attack or something, but then 'Man dies of heart attack' just doesn't make the same kind of headline as 'Man eaten by kiler pet spider'.

I'd just like to say at this point, I don't actually READ 'the Sun' - honest guv! A colleague of mine mentioned the article, knowing I'm into slithery things and since I work in a library getting my hands on a copy was nice and easy

Stubby