Tarantula contaminated with asbestos could be on the loose in Cardiff

A SURVEYOR saw more than she bargained for when she inspected a Cardiff attic.

Katie Parsons-Young was part of a team surveying an empty Victorian house in Roath, Cardiff, this week when she made the kind of discovery usually reserved for horror films.

The 31-year-old Kusten Vorland worker from Cardiff, who was looking for evidence of asbestos before the redevelopment of the building, said: "I had finished surveying my rooms and decided to make a start on the attic.

"We had rigged up some temporary lighting and I spotted a really strange structure in the corner. It looked like a little hutch.

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"When I got closer I saw a large hairy spider's leg hanging out of it.

"I just screamed my head off and the others came running.

"Even the biggest blokes got out of there as fast as they could."

As it turned out the leg was part of a shed skin - meaning the spider, thought to be a Chilean Rose Tarantula, could still be at large, and possibly contaminated with asbestos.

As to how it got there in the first place remains a mystery.

Miss Parsons-Young said: "I have no idea if it was kept there deliberately. It's a massive mystery, we just don't know how it was there.

"There was certainly no one going to the attic at all.

"I have spoken to some spider people and they said that spiders shed their skin quite regularly.

"It could still be alive in that attic."

A self-confessed spider-hater, Ms Parsons-Young is currently working back at the office.

She said: "Someone will have to go back in there eventually but it will definitely not be me.

"I have had a lot of people sympathise with me; there are a lot of arachnophobes  out there.

"I didn't sleep at all last night; I can still see that leg when I close my eyes."