It’s not your typical case of an abandoned pet in Airdrie, or anywhere really.

Airdrie resident Susan Lee took to Facebook over the weekend after spotting a tarantula walking through the grass near the pedestrian overpass.

The post received hundreds of comments from people who were both concerned for the creature and concerned about the creepy crawler strolling around near an Airdrie pathway.

Two residents, caught up in the web of concern, decided they needed to do something to help the tarantula and get it to safety.

The first person on scene was Heather Tuffnail.

“I started to freak out a little bit. What if someone sees it and they’re so scared of it that they do kill it? Obviously, a tarantula wandering around Airdrie, that’s not its natural habitat,” Tuffnail said.

She says she looked all over for the giant spider, at first only finding its terrarium abandoned among a group of trees.

After more searching, she stumbled across the tarantula as it crawled towards her along a pathway and she soon realized she was not equipped to transport or care for the critter on her own, as she just welcomed a newborn.

“I tried to put it in the container I had, the container was too small for it, so I basically just popped the container over top of it,” said Tuffnail. “I cried like a baby and posted that I needed some backup.”

When Heather asked for some help, Cee Alexander and her partner Vic dropped what they were doing and came to help.

“I looked at the photo and was like ‘that’s a damn tarantula, babe, we’ve got to go,’ we just dropped everything, didn’t turn off the TV or the Xbox or nothing, just got out of the house and we were there within 20 minutes,” Alexander said.

Photo Courtesy: Cee Alexander - Tuffnail the Tarantula in 'spider ICU'

Having owned a tarantula in the past they all decided Alexander was likely the best person to care for the creature, especially since it was suffering from some injuries.

Alexander and her partner Vic are now nursing the spider back to health and they’ve given it the very appropriate name of Tuffnail, in honor of Heather.

“She’s doing great, her wound is scabbed over now and I’m starting to think she might be getting ready to molt, which would be perfect because she would just molt that wound right off,” Alexander explained.

They’ve created a Facebook page for Tuff and encourage anyone interested in keeping up with her story to follow the page for updates. You can follow along by clicking HERE.

Heather and Cee both spoke with Claire and Leah on the morning show about The Great Tarantula Rescue of 2019. Their interview clips are posted below in case you missed it and want to listen to their first-hand accounts of what happened!