Mum’s horror at discovering escaped tarantula the ‘size of her hand’ in front garden

A mum was shocked to discover a tarantula the size of her hand in her front garden - which turned out to be an aggressive species with ‘a nasty bite’ from South Africa. Sarah Rodmell, 30, was alerted by builders who stumbled across the huge creepy-crawly as they carried out renovation works at her home in Stapleford, Nottinghamshire on Friday (October 21).

Despite being terrified of spiders, the mum-of-two gave the curled up creature a nudge and was left stunned when it began to move. She then bravely managed to scoop up the tarantula into a box and moved it into her kitchen before calling reptile experts to come and take it away.

It was later confirmed to be an Orange Baboon tarantula, which possesses an extremely painful bite and are native to Angola and other parts of Africa. School worker Sarah said: “It was 9am and the builders were doing work on the roof and they left some of their materials outside on the front.

“They saw this thing on the front curled up. They didn’t know what it was but as soon as they found out it was a tarantula they all stepped back. I kind of gave it a little nudge and it got on its feet and started wiggling. We got a box and we poked it into it.

"It was a bit surreal to see it chilling in a box in my kitchen. Every time I was walking in the kitchen, I was going ‘oh my God, I have a tarantula in my house’."

Sarah’s daughter Kacie, 13, managed to identify the eight-legged creature as an Orange Baboon tarantula due to its distinctive markings on its back. Her three-year-old son Rudi affectionately named it Dobby and even begged his mum to keep it.

Sarah added: “We started looking at the patterns on it and my daughter started Googling different types and decided it was an orange baboon tarantula. The markings matched the descriptions and we Googled whether it was venomous.

“We had it for a few hours in the house, my son wanted to keep it. I was like ‘don’t get attached’. He ended up naming it Dobby. This tarantula has a nasty bite and an aggressive temperament.

“I’m terrified of spiders but I worked in a care home and they brought snakes and a tarantula in, so I conquered my fears of them. But you won’t catch me near any other spiders.”

Washington’s Relentless Reptiles in Loughborough collected the spider straight away, and were able to shed some light on why the arachnid had shown up in Sarah’s garden. “This guy got in contact with me after I put it on Facebook and he lost an Orange Baboon tarantula a while ago moving,” Sarah added.

"He lived on the same street as me but moved house in July. Somehow it survived until now. He just couldn’t find it, so it must have escaped.”

The Orange Baboon Tarantula can grow six inches in length and is primarily found on the African continent, in Angola as well as central, eastern and western Africa. It has a notoriously aggressive nature and is known to have a very painful bite so experts advise people to avoid holding them.