Real-life Arachnaphobia

Holy....

I'm just glad no one was bitten and poisoned. That is a FRIGHTFUL spectacle.

I get bit all the time in my sleep. They're not brown recluse but they still itch like a bastard. In fact, that reminds me that the bug guy should be showing up in the next week or two.

Sweet baby jesus. Kitty you've just given me nightmares for at least a month to come. I have an ever growing irrational fear of spiders.

How venomous are Brown Recluse spiders? Are they on par with the Black Widow?

Their venom causes flesh to sort of decompose. Verrrry nasty stuff.

I would never be able to sleep in that house again.

When I was little, I had a terror of Black Widows. I never saw one, but we were taught that cupboards and barns and holes in the ground contained them, and they were black and round-bodied and shiny with elegant, long, cruel-looking legs.

And if one bit you, you would DIE!

Now when I visit relatives in California, I still have trouble sleeping at night in the safest, cleanest houses, thinking one will crawl into the bed, and if I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom (or wander around idly cos I'm just so jetlagged) I live in terror of stepping on one in my bare feet, so I put shoes on.

True story.

I'm so glad I live in a country where the most scary animal is the common wasp. And I've never even been stung by one of those.

<img src="http://membres.lycos.fr/klauswagner/beast1.jpg" alt="" />

English bugs are so polite.

Look at that loony bitch's CANINES. WOW.

Not Kitty, I mean the Queen.

As far as I know, the Brown Recluse is the most poisoness spider in N. America.

Lord above. Now I need to know if these creatures come anywhere near Canada.. If so I'm movin to Antartica.

Even more so than that Black Widow? I thought the widow was a fairly nasty bugger?

Spiders need love too!

My mom used to work for a couple of pest control companies back when I was a teen and I saw the results of brown recluse bites up close, from the guys that went out in the field, and it is not pretty at all.

Our place has lots of common brown house spiders (I am sure there is a real name for them) but everytime we get some sort of bite that just looks a little odd we have to watch it very closely to make sure it doesn't turn to something worse. Ick.

Its range is pretty limited:

<img src="http://www.geo-outdoors.info/images/spiders/brown_recluse_map.gif" alt="" />

Hopefully this'll make you feel a little better Kitty (the last sentence):

<a href="http://spiders.ucr.edu/myth.html" target="_blank">http://spiders.ucr.edu/myth.html</a>

Time to start packing.

And after a little digging it seems that Black Widows are still the most poisonous NA spider.

Queen of the Damned?

Huh, I guess I remembered wrong.

Anyway, the common brown spiders you are refering to Shelby are probably any number of types of wolf spiders. Perfectly harmless, and actually quite helpful in controlling other pests. Consider them a good thing. Brown Recluse spiders are also known as violin spiders(if my memory hasn't failed me completely) as they generally have a violin shaped spot on the back of their carapace.

Well you aren't completely off BD. I think they're probably considered more poisonous only because their venom is a systemic neurotoxin where as the Recluse venom causes mostly localized damage. They're both nasty little Aracs and as such I was WOEFULLY disappointed not ot see them represented in 8LF.

And as a result of this thread adn my research I now have a full on case of the creepy crawlies.

A coworker of mine got bit by a brown recluse last summer. He didn't know it was a recluse, so didn't go to the doctor for several days. It was only after he woke up one day and saw a giant open wound that he thought, "Maybe I should have this checked out." It was so gross. I saw a picture of his leg and there was literally a hole about the size of my thumb. It would have kept growing if he hadn't taken antibiotics!

Thank God we don't get bad spiders up here. I'm the biggest fucking wuss when it comes to spiders.

In fact, just yesterday, it was absolutely BEAUTIFUL outside. The air was crisp, there wasn't a cloud in the sky...I thought to my self, "I think i'll go sit out on the deck and play my Gameboy Advance."

I open the back door and walk into a spider web. Out of the corner of my left eye, I see something crawling. There's a spider that ranks as one of the biggest i've ever seen in person.

I back away, sit down, and watch it for practically the rest of the time i'm out there. Yes, even while playing the Gameboy.

I'm a pussy!

You been scaremongoring again?
Found <a href="http://www.uky.edu/Agriculture/Entomology/entfacts/struct/ef631.htm" target="_blank">this</a>

And about half way down it goes on to say that most bites aren't harmful although they can lead to scarring and ulcerations.

Spoilsport.

Ulcerations...decomposing fless...either way the bites are still nasty:

<a href="http://www.highway60.com/mark/brs/bite.asp?Msg=573" target="_blank">http://www.highway60.com/mark/brs/bite.asp?Msg=573</a>
<a href="http://lancaster.unl.edu/enviro/Images/Insects/recbite.jpg" target="_blank">http://lancaster.unl.edu/enviro/Images/Insects/recbite.jpg</a>
<a href="http://www.brown-recluse-spiders.com/" target="_blank">http://www.brown-recluse-spiders.com/</a> (scroll down to see the really nasty bites)

My wife and I went hiking here in CT this past weekend, and aside from mosquito bites, one of her bites turned unusually large, red, and swollen. I'm from the south, so immediately I worry that it's a brown recluse. Looking at the map above, I'm glad it's probably not a brown recluse (not that I was convinced it was), because I knew how nasty their bites could be. I've also heard brown recluses called "fiddlebacks," just in case you're ever on Jeopardy.

I can tolerate large, hairy spiders (e.g. tarantulas, wolf spiders) pretty well, but I can't stand the little crawly abdomeny spiders. Yick.

Yup. That's what teh bite on my friend's leg looked like.

My friend John was a victim of a Brown Recluse here in the Atlanta area earlier in the Summer. Same thing as Diva's friend. Bit him on the thight and swelled up HUGE and the flesh began rotting away. He had to go to the doctor numerous times to have antibiotics injected and fluied drained from the wound. Gross, gross stuff.

Scary thing is, when you get bitten by a Recluse you usually don't even know, because its bite doesn't hurt. That might sound okay, but the creepy part is that the venom builds inside the bite for several hours (or perhaps as much as a day or two) and then suddenly BURSTS and the result is severe instant pain. John was just watching TV and then felt as if someone had shot him in the leg. Yikes.

My brother-in-law runs an exterminating & landscaping company and naturally has a "collection" of various household pests (thankfully, they are dead and floating in alchohol filled jars). I've seen Brown Recluses of various sizes. And these things are pretty common in the Southeast and lower Midwest. Creepy, evil little bastards.

And wolf spiders?? Not venomous... but might actually be scarier. I once killed one in my basement with a spray and it literally made a THUD sound when it hit the basement floor. :shudder:

I used to catch and play with(handle, and make them jump from like a 6 ft deck) wolf spiders only slightly smaller than tarantulas(a good 4-5" leg span easy). That was a good time. Colorado has some of the neatest animals in all of america.

Dear sweet lord.. Surely you kid? Right? It made a THUD sound?

Wolf spiders - you know, one of those buggers woke me up in the night? I had a plastic bag I kept my laundry in, and I woke up to hear something large and heavy crumpling it. I thought a mouse had got in.

But no, it was this enormous spider more than capable of meeting my eye.

Now, I'm Scottish halfway, and have always been told it's unlucky for a Scot to kill a spider. And I'm a superstitious type, which means that Spider Boy cannot die, but must be ousted from my block in college or else I WILL NEVER SLEEP AGAIN.

So, I pick up something to capture him with - I have a pint glass lying by the bed and a coaster. However, the bugger is so huge that I can't fit him in the glass without trapping his legs, and he SO doesn't want to go. But I finagle him in there with much squeaking and false starts and screaming and dropping things and chuck him out of an upper window.

I can hear the noise he makes as he hits the bushes below.

My parents in France have two in their barn that live under a window lintel and are so big you could probably harness them up and get them to pull a cart. I've never seen all of them, just a head and a couple of legs, but I can assure you that is quite enough to make a person hope they never see the rest.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Decline and Fall of Alice's Empire:
<strong>Now, I'm Scottish halfway,</strong>

<strong>So, I pick up something to capture him with - I have a pint glass lying by the bed and a coaster.</strong>

Sounds like you're Scottish all the way. wink

That just made tears spring to my eyes. Were I to encounter a spider beig enough to crinkle plastic I would sure die of fright on the spot!

Now as for the ones under your parents window. Are we talking 8 Legged Freaks territory here?

Oddly while this entire subject squicks me out I can't help but keep reading..

This is the creepiest thing I have ever read on these boards.

sadako - the French ones are each as big as my hand, or at least so I estimate because I am fucked if I am going to check it out.

My old roommate once squashed a spider in our living room, causing its body to burst forth with 80 kajillion (no exaggeration) babies. You could hear our screams for miles. We stomped them all, soaked the living carpet in Raid, and left the apartment for a day or two.

Still gives me the creeps.

Once in the country I was playing (I was like 9 or so) next to a tree that had a hole at the base. I looked in the hole and there was a black widow spider, larger than life, and an egg sac that had begun to hatch.

I ran to my uncle who promptly doused it in gasoline and set it afire. The egg sac burned and I saw little mite-like spiders on fire.

I used to feed grasshoppers to spiders to watch them web them up and drink da blurd! These were just common green farm spiders though.

Spiders freak me the fuck out.

That is the single most horrifying thing I've read EVER! I would have moved or been put into a mental facility for damn sure..

Alice. Kudos to you my dear because the fact that there are hand sized spiders in or around your parents abode and you still visit means you have woman-balls the size of grapefruits.. I would most likely never see my parents again until/unless they moved or the freaky mutant spiders were killed..

It's truth. A creeptastic moment indeed.

I got these exact same pictures in an email about a month or so ago.

Be warned... they are nasty!

<a href="http://www.abidingpresence.net/T1501/Information/BrownRecluse/" target="_blank">http://www.abidingpresence.net/T1501/Information/BrownRecluse/</a>

My aunt who lives in SC got bitten on the hand a few years ago and had to go to the ER and to a specialist in Charleston for treatments. She is fine now, but you can still see the effects of the bites on her hand.

Also, my mother told me a story about a young girl getting bit on the back of the head as she checked the mail in her mailbox. She later told doctors she thought someone had thrown a brick or rock at her head. Ouch!

I hate you all.

I won't sleep tonight.

When I lived out in the country, my dad had a wood pile with old lumber, railroad ties, etc.

For a school project I had to collect insect so I preceeded to move lumber out of the way, and spiders a million squirmed to hide. Yup, I had some good bug hunting that day.

Another time we came back from vacation and opened up a cabinet to find a zillion baby spiders crawling all over the place, seems a couple of egg sacks burst open.

One spider is fine....but a SWARM of spiders is just SCARY.

Ohh no one spider is just as bad.. Did you not read what Alice said about hand sized spiders? Now if there were a swarm of those.. Well I don't even want to delve any further into that thought eek!