Working in a midwest auto repair shop, we get our share of spiders and such. Brown recluse spiders are just that, reclusive. Ive seen them take up residence in old tire piles mostly. Ive rarely seen a recluse, but our shop bathroom has a small window where a particularly large hobo spider has set up shop. We named him Biggie because, well, its a huge spider that just sits on a web all day munching bugs and judging your poor dietary standard. We used to assign cancelled tickets to biggie. at some point, biggie had a small workstation and even an entry in our timekeeping software (for testing.)<p>So at some point he was just gone. We assumed he moved onto some nicer shop with tastier bugs, but as it turns out, biggie met his demise at the hands of our new tenant Goober, a chubby possum who made it through the window on a cold night and managed to scare the piss out of one of our front office sales folk.<p>This was completely unacceptable, shouting at a colleague at work is tantamount to casual harassment. So, we did what any coworkers did. We took Goober out to eat by luring him back outside with grapes and raisins. After he was out for the day, we built him a little workstation, fashioned some personal protection equipment, and even made goobers toolbox. It holds all our weird porsche/BMW bolts and nuts that, as far as we can tell, are in hard enough spots on the vehicles that only a German possum could install.
I've lived in Portland OR, Mid MO, and the Kansas City area. In mid-Missouri, the brown recluse is the standard house spider. Pretty much every spider in my house there was a brown recluse. I had a weird bruise-y/necrotic bite on my hip that I assumed came from one that got in bed with me. It healed up fine without any medical intervention even though it lingered for awhile. I suspect a lot of people get bitten over the span of their lives but the bites aren't really noticeable. Spiders get in your bed or get into your clothes sometimes. It takes a bit of work/luck to get a recluse bite. They're not aggressive and they're not looking for trouble.<p>The West Coast, in my experience, has very little on the Midwest when it comes to spiders and bugs. In Oregon I was blown away by the lack of bugs. I could leave my doors and windows open at night and nothing seemed to come in. Unreal! The only major thing Portland seemed to have on the middle states is slugs. Waking up in the morning to find slug trails in my kitchen and in the dog bowl was a weird experience. Live and learn!
What happens is occasionally you get news about some poor soul with multiple amputations because of necrotic tissue, and people assume "must've been a brown recluse" because it's a suitable scapegoat.<p>And of course, the fear of the brown recluse is that they don't really look like anything. We all think we can recognize a black widow, but a brown recluse just looks like a typical house spider.<p>That said, I'm suspicious a bit about comments how spiders never bite you. Last year suddenly the yellow sac spiders in the neighborhood got aggressive - I have no idea why, they're normally harmless house spiders all over my area, but I and a friend of mine both got bit by them completely out of the blue without warning. Spider just walked on and chomped. He told me he'd heard from others similar stories recently... I assumed it was some kind of distemper infection or something seasonal since normally they're harmless.<p>It stung like hell and left my arm sore for a week.
Yep, tons of spider in Missouri... I used to be somewhat freaked out about brown recluse spiders as a child but now as an adult I could care less. There is one with a web setup in my basement that I walk by every day, I just let it be since there is a pile of dead bugs under the web.<p>I remember one kid in high school got bit and had a nasty necrotized spot on his ankle, other than that I have only heard of a few people who have been bit.<p>As far as black widows go, I have only seen/caught a couple of them and never heard of anyone being bit by one.
I live in Texas. There are brown recluse here. I don't really fear a spider since it doesn't seem like they are all that aggressive to people. The worst part of spiders to me are when I walk through a web. Ive had a bad spider bite that caused great swelling and some necrosis, but I don't know it was a brown recluse. I personally have a nasty fear of wasps, which I cannot rationally explain other than I think they look mean and evil and can fly at you. Here in Houston, we have 2 types that are especially aggressive. The worst is the yellow jacket, since they are great at building a hive in the ground and their small size means you don't see them until its too late in many cases. The other is the Mahogany/Red paper wasp. These guys are usually ok most of the year, but as summer turns to fall, they get a bit aggressive and start wanting your food. They are also relatively large and make pretty big nests.<p>Even through they are great mosquito killers, I won't let a nest live near a place I frequent. We also have cicada killer wasps, which are very large and very inquisitive. That combination usually has me spazing out at least once a year as they dive bomb me...
As a native-born Californian, I’m glad to hear it.<p>As a long-term, transplanted resident of Virginia, however, I’m keenly aware of the statistically small, but non-zero chance of running afoul with a (suspected) brown recluse. In 2014 I spent six days in the hospital after being being bitten on the ankle.<p>Extensive courses of I.V. antibiotics were used to combat the necrotizing aspects of the venom. Along with a number of different topical anti-bactrials.<p>Unfortunately, because I did not capture the spider which bit me, it was impossible to definitively point to Loxosceles as the culprit, thus complicating treatment.<p>Recluse spider bites can be (relatively) painless, initially, and it could have happened while I was out hiking in the woods and stopped for a rest, or earlier, while at my home.
There’s this concept that any time you see a new story where the topic is your area of expertise, it’s baffling how completely inaccurate the story is.<p>And then we all keep reading stories about areas in which we aren’t experts, and it doesn’t occur to us that are likely equally misleading.<p>Because if we all factored that in, we wouldn’t believe any news.<p>And I guess we feel better thinking we know what’s going on, rather than acknowledging we are in the dark.
> How hard is that Arkansas guy laughing who was sleeping on top of 6 brown recluses?<p>I get the point and I second the sentiment and intent of the article. But then again that Arkansas guy must be very brave nonetheless when he isn't worried about six brown recluses living next to him while sleeping - considering that the spider definitely is venomous and a bite can trigger necrosis.
Growing up in TX my sisters and I were sufficiently scared to death of "fiddlebacks". I've never known anyone to be bitten but my wife got a nasty bite from something about a week ago. Big red swollen spot on her ankle and it immediately made me think of the Brown Recluse bite stories i was told as a kid. I asked my wife to keep an eye on it and if it looked any worse in 24 hours we're going to the doc. Fortunately, the swelling went down and things turned out fine.
In GA, I am wary for the black widow and the brown recluse, the former when indoors and the latter outdoors. I've not spotted either in months honestly, but I never stop being wary.<p>As far as CA natives being super freaked out about it...meh? I don't blame you. Fiddler spiders are scary looking and after seeing some of the wounds online, it's quite the eye opener.<p>I have never personally met someone in either GA or AR that had been bitten by either of these spiders, so if you lean towards the uncharitable side of things, I have a somewhat irrational fear caused by reading things in HTML docs downloaded from a remote server in cyberspace.<p>Edit: grammar
On the flip side, increased awareness of the little buggers is probably better for bite victims.<p>The mother of one of my childhood friends in chilly New Hampshire went to the hospital with a rash a few years back and several visits emerged missing a chunk of her back about the size of a tennis ball. Having never seen one, the doctors never even considered she might have a dangerous spider bite.
Relevant link: <a href="https://abc7chicago.com/man-uses-blowtorch-to-kill-spiders-sets-parents-home-on-fire/4546565/" rel="nofollow">https://abc7chicago.com/man-uses-blowtorch-to-kill-spiders-s...</a><p>The Fresno Fire Department said a man who was house-sitting for his parents set the home on fire after he used a blowtorch to kill black widows...
> wood louse spiders (Dysdera crocota)<p>Small typo. Is Dysdera crocata, not crocota. I used to play with those things annoying it with a little stick in a mix of fear and admiration. Children love predators so It was like finding a lion under a rock. A terrific brick-red and cream animal with impressive extra big fangs. Very "pokemonesque".
I like how aggressive the tone of this was "Although people are <i>free to disagree</i>, this opinion has come about after more than two decades of <i>constant research</i>".
The Myth of the Myth of the Brown Recluse<p>I have lived in California for 25 years and have never heard about the Brown Recluse living here. I guess I don't watch enough local news, but I think that Rick Vetter, being in the Department of Entomology at UC Riverside, is going to have an extreme over exposure to people who think the Brown Recluse is a problem. The random people who send him spiders are worried about the Brown Recluse, but 500 in say 30 years is not very many. If 1 in 500,000 people are super worried about these spiders in California, then he might interact with most of them. The essay is of course a bit tongue-in-cheek, but this problem of the Myth of the Brown Recluse is probably only experience by a small number of people.
Media hysteria is a very real danger to science and logic in general. Their concern is more about driving traffic to sites or getting viewers to increase ad revenue, not necessarily telling you the truth if it isn't particularly sexy. I see parallels with the onslaught against a lot of initiatives in the crop science sector. Playing to the emotions of people rather than the facts is a very dangerous spiral for us to fall into.
I briefly lived in Chile, where the Chilean recluse is considerably more venomous than the brown recluse. I met one man who was bitten by one on a neck vein. The damage to his heart now requires life long medication. Because of that, I'm going to continue to be afraid of brown recluses, despite living several degrees north of their known range in the US.
My sis-in-law had a necrotic bite from a brown recluse that nearly required surgery to stop the decay. This was in the Midwest. One of the happiest points of moving to CA is not finding them on my pillow. Creepy little creatures. I haven’t met anyone in 16y of life in CA that has heard of them.
> Only a handful of specimens (less than 10) have ever been collected in California and usually there is some connection between the spider and a recent move or shipment from the Midwest. There is a great "awareness" of brown recluse spiders in California mostly through a misguided media barrage which is fed by a fear of the unknown and unfamiliar. I repeatedly have seen the media in their "quest to seek out the truth" write completely speculative stories about the existence of the brown recluse in California. Unfortunately, the truth is not nearly good enough to sell news and therefore, a speculative story is fabricated based upon faulty assumptions.
What happens when you mix a brown recluse and a black widow? You get a brown widow. (Not really).<p>These <a href="http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/URBAN/SPIDERS/brown_widow_spider.htm" rel="nofollow">http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/URBAN/SPIDERS/brown_wido...</a> things are all over SW Florida insofar as I can tell from the egg sacs littering my lanai. There's more to say about them - but not now, I feel bad about passive/aggressive threadjacking. I'll just leave that link here for my fellow Floriduhuns.
In a similar vein, supposedly a lot of "spider bites" are not spider bites (according to source): <a href="https://www.livescience.com/37974-he-surprising-cause-of-most-spider-bites.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.livescience.com/37974-he-surprising-cause-of-mos...</a><p>I've known people to theorize that many small welts are caused by spider bites even though they didn't see the spider or know when they got bitten.
I read a similar article to this a while back about lack of Brown Recluse populations in Michigan despite a healthy fear and misreporting of sightings.
This is an odd claim. I live in Riverside where this article was written and found two brown recluse spiders in the last year. One outside by the front door and the second inside my bedroom. The tell tale identifier is the small violin shape in its back. They may not be common in California but they're common in my house in Riverside California just down the road from UCR.
Quite liked this jab """I repeatedly have seen the media in their "quest to seek out the truth" write completely speculative stories about the existence of the brown recluse in California. Unfortunately, the truth is not nearly good enough to sell news and therefore, a speculative story is fabricated based upon faulty assumptions."""
Yes I'm here in Kansas laughing. I've had a brown recluse walk down my arm out of my sleeve, and didn't get bit. Just brushed it off and stepped on it. Also my cousin has had several confirmed brown recluse bites. Yes they were painful disgusting etc etc, but didn't kill her or cause any life changing damage...
my Uncle got bit by a spider. Don't know if it was a recluse.<p>He was getting dressed in the morning. Put his work pants on that were draped over a chair, felt a sting on his thigh and a spider fell on the floor when he ripped off the pant and shook them out. He had a hands width depression that was about an inch deep. This was after it was healed and completely scarred over. I don't know how big it was while healing.<p>This was in Arkansas though so smack dab in the middle of the territory on that map[0]<p>Helping some friends on a farm in West Virginia, their greenhouses would fill up with black widows in the early spring before they got around to cleaning them out for the first planting. 1000s of them in each greenhouse. Quickly learned that they are entirely harmless.<p>[0]<a href="http://spiders.ucr.edu/images/colorloxmap.gif" rel="nofollow">http://spiders.ucr.edu/images/colorloxmap.gif</a>
As someone living right in recluse territory, I'm constantly terrified when going into a closet to get clothes...etc, even though I see black widows all the time. Any time you're at the gas pump or in your garage, look around and you can probably find one.
Did people here read the whole thing? This is some good reading! "The whole state would be evacuated" if even one live spider, as opposed to an "ex-spider" were found. That is good stuff! This made my day.
I live in Brown Recluse country. For a little over a year, I lived in an apartment <i>absolutely infested</i> with Brown Recluse spiders. The entire block of apartments (i.e. units sharing one roof) had the problem. AFAIK, we were the only block at the complex with the issue. Early on in living there I captured several of the spiders and had them identified. I was terrified, to say the least.<p>When I say infestation, I mean it literally. It was very unusual to make it to bedtime without killing at least one Brown Recluse. The most we ever killed in one night was 15. We would wake up all hours of the night, turn on our phone flashlights, and scan the room for any lurking on the ceiling or walls. Usually, the midnight scans would bear fruit. To this day I wake up in the middle of the night and reach for my phone before remembering that I'm no longer in that situation.<p>One year and one week after moving into the apartment, I was bitten. One of the poor creatures found its way under my covers and into my shirt while I was sleeping. I rolled over on top of it and it bit me. The burn/itching actually woke me up shortly after and I was able to recover the spider from inside my shirt. I <i>absolutely panicked</i>, rounded up my entire family to drive me to the ER at 3 AM (because surely I was going to go into some kind of shock or other state of impairment) and even called the doctor on the way. Halfway to the ER, the doctor called back. He told me not to panic, and that there was actually nothing they could do about it right this minute. He told me to go home, go to sleep, and watch the bite for any signs of infection/necrosis.<p>And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the best advice I've ever heard regarding Brown Recluses.<p>All in all, the bite amounted to little more than a massive mosquito bite. My body did have an allergic reaction (broke out in a rash head to toe) but it was honestly nothing like the horror stories. We moved two months later, but I'll never let myself forget the overreaction I presented and how silly it all was.<p>I actually started to feel that I was getting to know them. Brown Recluses are exactly that: reclusive. They want nothing to do with us. They are magnificent hunters and terrible climbers (this is how they end up in your bed: they fall). They tend to stick to the edges of the room and are the only spider I've ever seen with a distinct "stalk" instead of a twitchy walk. They're honestly beautiful to watch (as I used to often).<p>If you do have a Brown Recluse problem, don't panic. It took me over a year to get bitten while living in an actual nest of them and even then it was a freak accident. Buy yourself some of those rectangular glue traps and place them along your walls, behind furniture, and in the back of closets. Brown Recluses can be dangerous to children under the age of 7 and the elderly (which is why we moved promptly) so don't ignore them entirely. Learn to respect them for what they are just like anything else.
I've had people tell me that brown recluse don't live in Washington, and that it's a similar "myth", but one of my friends got bit by one in high school and ended up with a hole in his leg the size of a marble
DRTS; (For those of you who didn't read, because... font too small) - Brown recluse spiders, in general, don't bite people unless you have less than 20/20 vision. In that case, you should run for the hills, esp. if you don't know how to zoom in the browser. A+ for content, but accessibility less so.