Around 2am on Sunday several police cars rushed to an apartment in the northern suburb of Wollstonecraft, responding to reports of a woman screaming hysterically, a man yelling, “I’m going to kill you, you’re dead”, and furniture being thrown. A man police described as “out of breath and rather flushed” answered the door and the local area command’s Facebook page documented the exchange that followed.

“Where’s your wife?” an officer asked.
“I don’t have one,” the man replied.
“Where’s your girlfriend?” he pressed.
“I don’t have one,” he said.

Police told the man neighbours had heard the screams, the threats to kill, the dull thud of flung furniture. “Come on mate, what have you done to her?” the officer asked.

“It was a spider,” the man replied sheepishly. “A really big one.”
“What about the woman screaming?”
“Yeah sorry, that was me,” he said. “I really, really hate spiders.”