NEW Year's festivities came to a horrible halt for Heather and David Snow when they discovered something nasty in the woodshed.

They had noticed two gruesome looking creepy-crawlies hanging from a web some weeks earlier.

But the real shock came when they found that the bugs that had taken up residence in the back garden of their Christchurch home could be potentially lethal black widow spiders.

The creatures were tentatively identified by experts at Southbourne-based Reptiles Plus from a snapshot.

Charity fund-raiser Heather, who hates spiders, immediately christened the eight-legged interlopers Les and Amanda after celebrity couple Les Dennis and Amanda Holden.

"I'd read that the female disposes of the male after mating by eating him alive. It seemed appropriate." she explained.

She also demanded that husband David get rid of the unwanted guests and, armed with a frying pan, stood by to watch the deed being done. But when they opened the shed door only Amanda was left.

"She seemed to have made a meal of Les. There was no sign of him," said Heather.

However, the mystery continues. After seeing Amanda in the flesh, as it were, Reptiles Plus say she isn't in fact a black widow but she is almost certainly both female and foreign.

"To be honest, we don't know what she is," said a spokesman.

"Our advice in cases like these is always to exercise caution. She is unlikely to be poisonous but you never know."

It is believed the Snows may have unwittingly brought the spiders back to England in their luggage from recent holidays in Turkey and the Dominican Republic.