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There was quite a bit of, er, excitement shall we say in an Austrian supermarket this week over a rare spider found in the store whose bite has been linked to death and in some cases… an hours-long erection.
The spider was fittingly spotted in a banana box at Penny Markt in Krems an der Donau by the store manager, and the store promptly called the fire brigade to investigate; the store was closed on August 8th and has now been cleared to reopen after a two-day “comprehensive cleaning and disinfection,” per a quote from the Rewe retail group, which owns the supermarket chain, in a report on the Austrian outlet NÖN.
“The branch is safe and clean,” declared Rewe spokesperson Claudia Riebler. “It can be ruled out that the animal seen is still in the store.”
All fresh food in the supermarket was removed and replaced, and it was also noted that during the extensive search “no spiders have been found to date.”
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“All measures are for safety and are carried out meticulously so that the branch can be reopened,” the company further noted in a statement translated into English by Google.
The spider, described by the store manager as about 4 inches long and colored black and red, was initially suspected of being a banana spider, but previous cases of spiders in bananas from South America have identified the spider more specifically as the Brazilian Wandering Spider. This rare breed has one of deadliest bites in the world and can also cause hypothermia, blurred vision and convulsions.
But enough foreplay — the risk everyone wants to talk about, the one that puts the MAN in Spider-Man, is the spider bite's tendency to cause an hours-long erection. NY Breaking even reports that researchers have used the venom in studies to treat erectile dysfunction, although that kind of just sounds like something a male spider would say as a #humblebrag to try to pick up a female spider at a local dive bar during mating season. (“Who's got eight legs and a thorax full of Viagra venom, this arachnid!”)
This whole story might sound like fodder for an adult-film spoof of the 1990 classic Arachnophobia, or a potent addition to the Marvel Skinematic Universe (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Sheets, perhaps?), or a raunchy follow up to Sleepless in Seattle called Excited in Austria, but the spider's bite is actually no laughing matter. Remember, it even has the potential to cause death. So please spare me the jokes about it also causing the need for an open-casket funeral. Really classless, you guys, you're better than that.
