Brown widows ‘have moved into the schoolyard’

AN AYIA Napa woman who claimed to have found a plague of poisonous brown widow spiders in her garden says the eight-legged creatures have now spread to the local playground.

Angelika Chrysostomou says around 15 of the spiders and hundreds of egg sacs can be found on wooden benches in the children’s park opposite the Senator Hotel in the centre of Ayia Napa.

“We don’t go to the playground any more – the spiders are hiding under the slats in the wooden benches, where mothers sit with their children.”

Chrysostomou says her six-year-old daughter uncovered the brown widows in the playground and recognised them as the same creatures infesting their garden.

The Ayia Napa mother says she sent one of the spiders off to experts in America in September after local officials dismissed her suspicions as groundless.

She says Dr Fred Santana, co-ordinator of the Integrated Pest Management programme for Sarasota County at the University of Florida, confirmed that her spiders were “without doubt” brown widows.

“This was after government officials had told me the spiders were of a harmless indigenous variety.”

But an expert at the Cyprus Environmental Studies Centre said relatives of the deadly black widow were reasonably common on the island.

“There are two or three species in Cyprus belonging to the widow family and they do have a toxic venom. But they are not considered very dangerous because they aren’t aggressive.”

Experts say brown widows only tend to bite humans when they are accidentally pressed against the skin. Most commonly, people are bitten when the spider takes refuge in clothing or when people put their hands into crevices and corners.