Tarantulas cause mid-air panic
Two of the biggest phobias around – the fear of flying and spiders – conspired to cause panic on a Canada bound jet recently.
One passenger, who is asking for a refund from Air Transat, said she discovered a tarantula crawling up her leg during a flight from Dominican Republic to Montreal, the CBC reported.
"My husband managed to trap it in a plastic container, but its legs were sticking out. My daughter was screaming, she was in a state of shock," said passenger Catherine Moreau.
Then a second tarantula was spotted in the cabin causing more panic among other passengers.
The second wasn’t captured until the flight had landed in Montreal.
The airline said most passengers remained calm and crew did as best as they could in an ‘extraordinary and isolated event’.
Moreau is asking for a partial refund for the close encounter with the hairy arachnid.
Her 11-year old daughter still suffers from nightmares since the incident in April and Moreau was stopped from snapping a photograph of the critter.
Etienne Normandin, an entomologist at the University of Montreal, told CBC the tarantula was likely from a common species found in the Dominican Republic and Haiti and is relatively easy to catch.
He said the species is ‘aggressive, but the venom is not strong’.
The two spiders were probably smuggled onboard in order to sell them.
"The market for live tarantulas is very lucrative," he said.
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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