Otago University students' battle to stop spiders, scarfies

Callum Bindon has been left dealing with two types of pest as people continuously steal the sign declaring his victory over his spider infestation. Photo / Christine O'Connor

First it was the spiders that kept him up at night, then it was the scarfies.

University of Otago student Callum Bindon has a plan for both.

Since mid-March the arachnophobe has started his day by spraying the outside of his St David St flat with spider control spray.

He said spiders were constantly crawling through his window whenever it was open.

He got sick of explaining what he was doing to curious passers-by and decided to make a big sign out the front of his flat declaring his continued conquest over the infestation.

Each morning he would proudly update the tally.

That soon led to the next thing to keep him awake: cheeky scarfies sneaking through the garden to snatch his sign.

Bindon had the numbers taken off his sign 10 times and the entire sign stolen twice.

He once managed to reach 29 days spider-free before someone stole it and he started from scratch, he said.

Now on "Mark III" of his sign, Bindon was taking no chances.

He and his flatmate developed a complicated and discreet alarm system involving bells, glass bottles, rocks and lots of string.

"We pride ourselves on our ingenuity."

Just last week he was woken at 3am to the "presence of sign swindlers", and rushed outside to witness them running away.

Eight-legged, silk-spinning fiends were worse than the continued thefts, but not by much, he said.

When asked what it was that he hated about spiders, Bindon said "it's the legs".

They were all sprawled out with their furry limbs, stared mockingly with their beady eyes and could be hiding anywhere, he said.

As a health sciences student he was well aware of the effects stress had on the body and had been far happier since ridding the property of arachnids.

Although spider spray was starting to eat into his weekly food budget, he believed he would be able to keep up the fight all year, he said.

He and his flatmate have set up an Instagram page called days_without_spiders to track his progress.