A pregnant tarantula named Penelope was supposedly on the loose in Park Slope, and her owner was scrambling to find her before she popped out her creepy spawn – except the story turned out to be a hoax.
“I know she looks crazy scary, but she’s mostly harmless. She’s pregnant, so I’m hoping to find her before she has her babies,” the unnamed “owner” implored in “missing” posters taped up on 19th Street near Fifth Avenue.
“She’s mostly active at night and she tends to hide in dark corners. She shouldn’t bite, but sometimes she jumps,” read the signs, which bore a large photo of the Mexican red rump tarantula.
The five-inch spiders — which are poisonous but can’t kill humans — lay up to 300 eggs and live up to 25 years, experts say.
The posters’ photo spooked some passers-by.
“If it ended up next to me, I’d scream. It could bite me!” said truck driver Davey Tolentino, 24, who works in the neighborhood.
Julie Barbarese, 28, who lives on the block, said the big, hairy critter is enough to give her nightmares.
“Now I’m super paranoid and will look under my bed . . . This is terrifying,” she said.
Other neighbors suspected the signs were too weird to be real.
#WeAllHaveThatFriend who just doesn't know about personal space pic.twitter.com/F119dh5g5F
— Penelope (@BKTarantula) July 11, 2014
“I seriously doubt this is true. I hope it isn’t true. I thought it was a joke when I saw the poster,” said Christine Stromer, 37, an interior designer who walked by with her 3-year-old son, Julian.
And she was right.
The New York Times reported on its web site Friday night that a man who answered the number on the poster admitted it was all a joke.
“I always see those signs for missing dogs and cats taped up on posts; I thought, ‘What’s the most absurd poster I could come up with?’ ” the man said. “I thought it was so beyond ridiculous that no one would take it seriously. I was wrong.”
The man – who said he worked as a web designer – said he was on the train when he saw the story exploding on Twitter.
“I never expected it to blow up,” said. I thought, ‘Oh, man.’ I actually didn’t know how to spell tarantula. I had to Google that.”