A rural Pennsylvania school district has temporarily closed one of its four elementary school because people keep seeing venomous spiders in the building.
The site of the possible infestation of fanged, eight-legged creepy-crawly things is Montgomery Elementary School in Mercersburg, Pa., reports local ABC affiliate WHTM-TV.
School district officials made the shutdown decision after consulting with a local pest control firm.
The exterminators found about half a dozen brown recluse spider in the Montgomery Elementary library around the middle of July. The nasty arachnids were trapped on sticky pads behind some bookcases.
Previously, officials had found brown recluse spiders in the elementary school’s cafeteria kitchen and also in its boiler room.
“We’re spraying the outside of the building,” Tuscarora superintendent Charles A. Prijatelj told WHTM. “We’re going to fog the entire building, including above the hanging ceiling, and we’re also going to do underneath all the crawl spaces.”
Montgomery Elementary will remain close until Monday at the earliest. Then there will be a second round of pesticide in mid-August.
“One point I want to make about this spider, what makes it difficult to eradicate is it doesn’t like sunlight. It doesn’t like sunlight. It’s reclusive,” Prijatelj told The Patriot-News, the main daily newspaper out of Harrisburg, Pa.
“We’re not bringing kids in until it’s taken care of,” Prijatelj also promised, according to WHTM.
“Right now, I’m maybe a little nervous,” Mamie Flannery, the mother of a nine-year-old girl who attends the school, told the ABC station. “There were spiders in the school in years past. This definitely raises an eyebrow, but I feel certain that they’re not going to bring our children back unless they’re good and exterminated.”
School district officials say they are hopeful that the school can open for students on the first day of school.
Brown recluse spiders have a violin-shaped marking on the front section of their poisonous spider bodies. Their legs are slanted. And they have three sets of beady spider eyes.
The venom from brown recluse spiders can cause vomiting, fever, kidney failure and serious skin necrosis.
Last fall, the Federal National Mortgage Association contracted with a St. Louis-area exterminator to rid a 2,400-square-foot house on the front nine of a country club of an alleged infestation of brown recluse spiders. (RELATED: State Farm Was NOT There When This Family’s House Was INFESTED With Thousands Of DEADLY SPIDERS)
Last summer, after yet another, summer-long bout of fabulously mild temperatures, scientists in the United Kingdom warned that really big spiders could invade people’s homes. The unusual size would be possible because the spiders may have been able to consume a larger-than-usual amount of tasty prey. (RELATED: Newest Climate Change Danger: GIANT SPIDERS)
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