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Terrified neighbours phoned the police after hearing a woman screaming hysterically and a man yelling: “I’m going to kill you”.

But when officers arrived at the address they discovered the flat's sole occupant had been trying to catch a SPIDER .

The shamefaced man admitted he had been shouting death threats at the arachnid and had been the person behind the high pitched screaming.

According to New South Wales police in Australia, they received multiple calls about the sound of crashing furniture and a man screaming: “I’m going to kill you, you're dead! Die Die!!”.

(Image: ninfaj/flickr)

Numerous police cars responded to the address in Wollstonecraft in Sydney and began banging on the door. A man answered the door, out of breath and rather flushed.

The local area command’s Facebook page documented the exchange that followed.

Police asked him: “Where’s your wife?”

He responded: “Umm I don’t have one”

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Police then asked: “Where's your girlfriend?”

He said: "Umm I don’t have one.”

Read more : Young woman seconds from death after false widow spider bite

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?”

(Image: wikihow.com)

“Yeah sorry, that was me,” he said. “I really, really hate spiders.”

The police spokesman said it turned out the man had been chasing a large spider around his house with a can of insect spray.

A spokesman said: "After a very long pause, some laughter and a quick look in the unit to make sure there was no injured party (apart from the spider) we left."

It is not the first time a spider has led to a police call out.

Another arachnophobe set a service station in Michigan on fire in September after he tried to scare a spider away from his petrol tank using a lighter, with predictable results.