Education

MENACING, VENOMOUS SPIDERS Cause Pennsylvania Grade School To Close

Font Size:

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)

Follow Eric on TwitterLike Eric on Facebook. Send education-related story tips to erico@dailycaller.com.

Tags : spiders
Eric Owens

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel