'May have overreacted': Meet the man whose spider-killing escapade went viral
A Perth man whose attempts to kill a spider have gone global has admitted he “may have overreacted” after a passerby mistook his screams for something far more sinister.
Neighbours called police thinking someone was being killed on their Edgewater street – but it was just a not-so-brave dad taking on a household pest.
It turns out the spider that sparked a very big reaction was not so big itself.
“I may have overreacted, I’m a pretty dramatic person at the best of times,” father Rhys Howard said.
It’s fair to say he really doesn’t like spiders.
His partner Kara is normally the designated creepy crawly killer, but when she was in the shower on Wednesday, Mr Howard was called into action.
“So I had to just kind of do it, had to man up,” he explained.
That was when Kara began hearing a commotion coming from the other side of the bathroom door.
“He started screaming ‘why won’t you die?’ over and over again,” she said.
A passerby heard and called police ,fearing his two-year-old was being murdered.
“Berry was screaming in the play room and I was like, ‘Berry, stay back’!” Mr Howard recalled, saying the whole ordeal has become “embarrassing”.
When police rocked up at the property, they were dealt a surprise they weren’t expecting.
“We’re thinking about starting the SSD, The Special Spider Division,” one officer joked.
Police later tweeted about the hilarious mix-up ,sharing a log of the incident.
Within hours it was being shared right across the globe as the world lapped up yet another wildlife-related Aussie story.
