'Got the Spider!' joke on demolished house goes viral

Steven Adams
Saturday, July 20, 2019 1:31 p.m. | Saturday, July 20, 2019 1:31 p.m.

Debris surrounds a demolished home with the words “Got the Spider” on the roof Friday, July 19, 2019, in Renner, S.D. The homeowners wrote the message on Monday, July 15, as a joke after they tore the house down. The photo has since gone viral with tens of thousands of shares on Facebook.

A spray-painted joke on a demolished house is putting Renner, South Dakota, on the map.

Jeff Hopkins, 51, and his girlfriend, Dawn Cronk, 49, decided to have a little fun with their extra house they had just torn down, reports the Argus Leader.

The couple agreed that “Got the Spider!” would make them and passersby chuckle so Cronk headed to Walmart for a 69-cent can of spray paint, the Argus Leader reports.

“I didn’t think anybody would really notice,” Hopkins told the newspaper. “We did it just to make us laugh.”

A passing motorist shared a photo on Facebook Tuesday and that sparked a steady stream of visitors slowing down or stopping to take their own photos of the joke painted on the collapsed home.

The picture has been shared on Facebook more than 55,000 times.

“It made somebody smile for a day,” Cronk told the Argus Leader. “It made somebody stop and giggle for a few minutes and remember that life doesn’t always have to be a hustle and bustle. To me it’s a blessing, because we made somebody smile and laugh about it.”