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Someone tried to smuggle spiders into the U.S. using Nintendo game cartridges

Trevor Mogg
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What’s worse than roaches in your PlayStation? Spiders in your Famicom, apparently.

To be clear, any arachnophobes reading this might want to skip on to something else right now. Either that or prepare to break into a cold sweat.

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So what happened? Well, earlier this week customs officials in Mexico stumbled across more than 70 live spiders hidden inside 10 bootleg Nintendo Famicom game cartridges. They were headed to an address near Baltimore, Maryland according to local media.

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The creepy package containing the as yet unidentified species was intercepted at Guadalajara International Airport on Wednesday, May 10. When officials took a closer look at the consignment, they found 73 spiders scuttling about inside plastic tubes concealed within the game cartridges.

The video below shows a customs officer carefully opening one of the cartridges to reveal seven separate tubes, each one containing a single critter. As the official holds one of them up to the camera, the picture flips out of focus — perhaps not a bad thing if the mere sight of a spider tends to cause the hair on the back of your neck to stand up.

Presumably someone in Maryland involved in the exotic-pet trade will be getting a knock at the door from guys in suits in the coming days. Taking creatures across borders without the proper documentation is obviously a serious offense, one that earned a German man a six-month jail term in the U.S. a few years back after he was caught bringing “hundreds” of tarantulas into the country by mail.

Roaches in your PS4

And if spiders aren’t enough to be dealing with, we heard just a few weeks ago about how cockroaches appear to enjoy shacking up inside PlayStation 4 machines, in some cases causing the device to crash ‘n’ burn.

The owner of a console repair store in Manhattan said he has a bag full of dead cockroaches extracted from broken PS4 machines brought in by gamers, and that he receives at least one roach-infested machine a week.

Apparently the insects love the PS4 not for its ability to entertain via its impressive selection of awesome games, but rather for its cozy, warm interior.

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Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
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