When you decide to keep a poisonous creature as a pet, you’re assuming quite a bit of risk.
After all, it would be horribly tragic and make you a laughing stock for all eternity if your pet somehow escaped and ended up killing you. And that’s exactly what happened to one not-so-careful guy in the German city of Dortmund.
In 2004, German police responding to smell complaints found a man named Mark Voegel dead inside an apartment full of exotic and deadly pets that had broken out of their cages.
iStock
Police determined that Voegel’s black widow spider, Bettina, got loose and killed him. When officers arrived, there were webs covering his whole body and spiders scurrying in and out of his nose and mouth.
iStock
Police described the inside of the apartment as “a cross between a botanical garden and the butterfly breeding ground in ‘The Silence Of The Lambs.'”
iStock
In addition to the deadly spiders, Voegel also had several large reptiles that were allowed to roam freely.
iStock
He even had a very large collection of termites that broke out of their enclosure. The hungry bugs were found snacking on his corpse.
iStock
Authorities said that the condition the pets were kept in was equivalent to animal cruelty. Voegel was estimated to have been dead for upwards of two weeks before his body was found.
iStock
(via The Sun)
Well, that is tragic. I want to laugh at the absurdity of it all, but that’s just too sad. Poor guy. Think twice about keeping exotic animals in your home!