You’ve seen the TV show the Office right? It’s supposedly about a fictional firm in Scranton and they use all sorts of references to the area so it’s fun to watch for that reason alone. The story revolves around the staff of a small firm’s office and how they interact with each other. It’s pretty funny at times and some of the characters are truly nutty.
But here’s a plot that even the wacky writers of the office could not cook up. A guy in a department store in Leicester England quit his job and sent a practical joke to a female co-worker. Now I have seen my share of office practical jokes. There was the time the brownies were laced with Ex-lax. The famous one where all the items on some guys desk were glued down. That one was great, especially when he tried to answer his phone and picked the whole thing up because the receiver was glued to the base. And the time where for some reason they turned my office into beach front property including a wading pool and several hundred pounds of beach sand. The cleaning service nearly quit on that one. But these little pranks pale in comparison to the one pulled off here.
It seems that according to the quaint way the British police report put it, Mahlon Hector and Susan Griggs had some form of a professional disagreement and the spider was meant as a practical joke. Some joke. Mahlon gave the woman a BIG spider in a box. A poisonous scary looking tarantula. The spider in question is a Mexican Red Kneed Tarantula. They grow to be about half a foot long and kill their prey with poisonous venom. These are the spiders that Hollywood uses when they want a scary one in the movie.
Now Mahlon has pleaded guilty to sending a letter or other article conveying a threat. But he won’t say what the whole spider thing was about. The good news is both the spider and Susan Griggs are ok. That’s really sort of remarkable. If someone had sent me a huge Mexican tarantula I am afraid that two things would have happened in the following order.
Someone would get a chance to clean up a squashed Mexican tarantula. And someone else would get to use our automated external defibrillator on me.
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