A true story and its source was the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service in Adelaide.

A bloke and his family were on holidays in the United States and went to Mexico for a week. An avid cactus fan, the man bought one-metre high, rare and expensive cactus there. On arrival back home Australian Customs said it must be quarantined for 3 months.

He finally got his cactus home. Planted it in his backyard, and over time it grew to about 2 metres. One evening while watering his garden after a warm spring day, he gave the cactus a light spray. He was amazed to see the plant shiver all over, he gave it another spray and it shivered again.
He was puzzled so he rang the council who put him on to the state gardens people. After a few transfers he got the state's foremost cactus expert who asked him many questions. How tall is it? Has it flowered? Etc.

Finally he asked the most disturbing question. "Is your family in the house?" The bloke answered yes. The cactus expert said get out of the house NOW, get on to the front nature strip and wait for me; I will be there in 20 minutes.

Fifteen minutes later, 2 fire trucks, 2 police cars and an ambulance came screaming around the corner. A fireman got out and asked "Are you the bloke with the cactus?" I am, he said. A guy jumped out of the fire truck wearing what looked like a space suit, a breathing cylinder and mask attached to what looked like a scuba backpack with a large hose attached. He headed for the backyard and turned a flame-thrower on the cactus spraying it up and down.

After a few minutes the flame-thrower man stopped, the cactus stood smoking and spitting, half the fence was burnt and parts of the gardens were well and truly scorched. Just then the cactus expert appeared and laid a calming hand on the bloke's shoulder. "What the hell's going on?" he says. "Let me show you" says the cactus man. He went over to the cactus and picked away a crusty bit, the cactus was almost entirely hollow and filled with tiger striped bird-eating tarantula spiders, each about the size of two hand spans.

The story was that this type of spider lays eggs in this type of cactus and they hatch and live in it as they grow to full size. When full size they release themselves. The cactus just explodes and about 150 dinner plate sized hairy spiders are flung from it, dispersing everywhere. They had been ready to pop. The aftermath was that the house and the adjoining houses had to be vacated and fumigated: police tape was put up outside the whole area and no one was allowed in for two weeks.

And here's what one of the buggers looks like sitting on a FULL SIZE dinner plate…..
Rescued attachment Spiderplate.jpg

If something on the internet starts with "a true story" you know its not

http://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/hoaxes/hoaxDetails.asp?HName=Spider+Explodes+Out+of+Cactus+Hoax

Good god! That is getting mailed to all the girls i know (still some school boy in me )

Great story, but I must p!ss on your fireworks I'm afraid:
http://www.snopes.com/

I hope it's true,
I'll have to get myself one of those babys
I love spiders, they're fantastic creatures!


john

It eats cats so I'm leaving it there.
Rescued attachment bigspider2.JPG

I have a wing mirror spider.

I guess he's into extreme sports, 'cause he survives car washes, windspeeds in excess of 100 mph and his dinner must come at him very fast!

Mike

I absolutely hate spiders and I must admit I took great pleasure when I found one on my exhaust manifold.

I'd just spent about an hour working on my Calibra's engine (forget what I was doing) but I suddenly saw this brown and orange spider crawling over the turbo (exhaust side).

Started the engine and spent 5 minutes watching it run left/right trying to cool its feet down before it eventually turned a nasty shade of dead.

Was a hardy little sod.

I know that was cruel, but they are nasty nasty things

You callous b@stard I feed the one outside, she loves it when you throw a bluebottle onto the web.

And tarantulas aren't particularly dangerous to humans. James Bond was just a girly wimp.

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Originally posted by Guinness
I have a wing mirror spider.

I guess he's into extreme sports, 'cause he survives car washes, windspeeds in excess of 100 mph and his dinner must come at him very fast!

Mike

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jesus christ! im arachnophobic and just reading the story made me need to go get a cold shower!...

nothing else in this world makes me become more of a complete pussy than spiders. you can put a gun at me, i can have freddy kruger as a blind date... whatever... just put a spider near me and i'll shriek like nothing u've ever seen !

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Originally posted by Peteff
You callous b@stard I feed the one outside, she loves it when you throw a bluebottle onto the web.

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quote:

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Originally posted by robertst
jesus christ! im arachnophobic and just reading the story made me need to go get a cold shower!...

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