ANN ARBOR, Mich. Staff at a University of Michigan library temporarily closed the building after three poisonous spiders showed up in a basement storage room.
The Mediterranean hermit spiders were found in the Shapiro Undergraduate Library on the school’s Ann Arbor campus at the end of January. The library reopened on Tuesday after being closed on Sunday and treated for spiders on Monday.
University spokeswoman Kim Broekhuizen said the spiders were not in public spaces, and staff closed the building due to a misunderstanding and out of an abundance of caution.
Bites through the spiders can cause problems, ranging from minor skin irritation to tissue death, according to University of Michigan professor Dearborn Anne Danielson-Francois, who identified an adult male spider trapped in a gum trap in the library.
“You’re unlikely to be in any danger unless you’re in close contact,” she told the Detroit Free Press. ‘But if you’re a plumber crawling through a crawl space with a lot of these spiders, then you might be a little bit, and that would be worrying. But just walking around in the library stacks is a very, very low risk. ‘
Danielson-Francois told WJBK-TV that the Mediterranean safe was found with people all over the world.
They love caves and can be found in basements and boiler rooms.