Aussie Gets Cozy With Poisonous Spiders

AOL News

(Nov. 15) -- Is there a limit to what you'd do to raise money for charity?

An Australian man who fancies himself a real-life "spiderman" is spending three weeks trapped in a storefront window with hundreds of poisonous spiders, hoping to break a record for habitation with creepy-crawlies and raise money for a local children's charity.

Nick Le Souef, a 67-year-old opal miner from Melbourne, stepped into the 12-by-4-foot window of his downtown shop today, where he plans to spend the next three weeks sleeping, eating and working alongside some of Australia's most deadly arachnids -- redbacks, tarantula-like huntsmen and black house spiders.

Real life "spiderman" Nick Le Souef holds a bird-eating spider Monday before he enters a shop window front to live with hundreds of deadly arachnids for the next three weeks to raise money for charity in Melbourne.

It's all part of a campaign to raise $50,000 for the local children's charity Variety.

And this isn't even the strangest thing Le Souef has done. According to his fundraising website, he currently holds the Australian records for living in a snake pit, in a shark tank and in a cage with a redback black widow spider -- all three weeks.

"I've been bitten by snakes, and I've been stung by stingrays and poisonous fish. But I've never been bitten by a spider. So there you go," he told Agence France-Presse, laughing.

Le Souef plans to live in his opal shop window with the spiders for more than 23 hours a day for the next three weeks, with just a half hour respite to take a shower, Australia's Herald Sun newspaper reported.

There were about 400 spiders in his window before an "arachnid massacre" when the creatures started eating each other, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. Le Souef had to throw a few crickets and cockroaches into the mess to keep the spiders' appetites in check before he entered the window himself.