Daily Archives: July 21, 2012

The Consumerist reports that a California man, who was trying to clear his yard of cobwebs, decided the best gardening tool for this project was a blowtorch. This soon lead to a brush-fire in his backyard, and $25,000 worth of uninsured fire damage to his house.

Elaborate fireworks are also probably an inefficient way to kill spiders.

This is bad news for the man, but here are three worse items that someone could try to use to kill spiders and clear cobwebs in their dry backyard:

1. A blowtorch being operated by a praying mantis. The praying mantis is a natural predator of a spider, so it could have got the job done without the blowtorch! Which, by the way, it will likely be unable to lift, resulting in the entire lawn catching fire, leading to a massive lawsuit from the Local Praying Mantis Union for unsafe working conditions, after the praying mantis sprains its exoskeleton and can’t make Sunday prayer. Read the rest of this entry →