Spider sighting causes evacuation at federal government office
OTTAWA — A tiny intruder caused a big scare recently at a government building in Ottawa, leading to the evacuation of 50 federal employees — twice. In June, employees at 2300 St. Laurent Blvd. were sent home for two days after someone spotted a spider in the office, according to the CBC.
The building was then fumigated, but in October, another spider was spotted — and caught — so employees were again sent home.
The fear? The spider might be the venomous brown recluse spider.
An entomologist, however, said the spider was a yellow sac spider, which is also purported to have a necrotic venom, but is not especially harmful to humans.
Catherine Scott, an arachnologist and PhD student at the University of Toronto, said the evacuations were an overreaction.
“This is totally absurd and a giant waste of money,” she said. “Fumigating the office with chemicals is probably more dangerous to the people working in that office than a spider would have been, even if it had been a brown recluse spider.”
Fewer than five of these spiders have ever been recorded in Canada in the last century, she said, and the chance of a being bitten are low.
