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Arachnophobia - that is, the unreasonable fear of spiders - isn't illegal, but it could still bring the police to your door if you scream loud enough.
An Australian man learned that the hard way this morning when, according to
reports by the BBC, a passerby heard him shouting, "Why don't you die?" inside his suburban Perth home. The passerby also heard a toddler wailing. Justifiably, the passerby called the police.
Multiple officers presently arrived at the scene and learned that the man - and the toddler - were screaming at a spider. The screaming man was deathly afraid of spiders, he told the police, and he had gotten a bit carried away while trying to kill an unidentified arachnid in his home. The man apologized for the inconvenience, according to
police logs tweeted (and subsequently deleted) by the local Wanneroo Police Department. Whether or not the spider was escorted from the domicile in four pairs of tiny handcuffs remains open to speculation.
Comment: Let's hope this clown is just getting some laughs out of the ridiculousness of today's PC culture. That said, given the absurdity of our environment, it's entirely possible this clown is completely serious.