Comments on: Annual Brown Recluse Spider Warnings

By: HLeavell

HLeavell — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:09:11 +0000

I have many in my home and by the research I have done it appears that having an exterminater come to your home to spray does very little good. I have also read that they don’t negotiate slick surfaces and that is false because I just took an item of clothing out of my dryer and there was one on it. I had gloves on thankfully. I have the sticky traps and those are fine if they happen to run through them. This is the 5th one I have killed in a 2 month period but the first I have found in my dryer, just another thing to worry about. Well I have to get my gloves back on and go find it, I sprayed insecticide directly on it about 15 minutes ago so hopefully it is dead. Oh it is true that everyone is affected differenty by their bites and some may only experience slight discomfort but there is a woman in my town who was bitten and she has had serious health problems and every years she has an erruption of the site of the bite and it has affected her major organs and that scares me! I live in Missouri.

By: Katie

Katie — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 18:24:25 +0000

I live in Phoenix and found a brown recluse spider in my house this fall. I had a pest control company come out to check my house because I was afraid it had laid eggs; and I did not want baby brown recluses all over my house. I really hope I never come across one again.

By: Jim

Jim — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 09:35:53 +0000

I got bitten by a brown recluse. It was hiding near the composter outside our house. My leg was weirdly tingly for a day or so, but that was about it. I removed it carefully and put it in a jar. It died about an hour later, cause unknown, but it was most definitely a recluse. A lot of people have asked why I didn’t preserve the spider for posterity so I’d have proof, but I think those people don’t realize how difficult it is to preserve a spider well.

By: bug

bug — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:32:37 +0000

I have a 1/2 written post about the over-diagnosis of brown recluse bites…I’ll have to move that up in the queue of “things I’ll get to any day now.”

By: Doug

Doug — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:22:27 +0000

Well, fortunately I have travel to South America on my schedule, so with any kind of luck I should achieve the trifecta by the end of the Austral winter.

@6 — thanks for the interesting information. Maybe I’m not in the running for the trifecta after all? I live well within the red reclusa zone, though, and have confirmed the little buggers in my house.

By: Bruce H

Bruce H — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:17:02 +0000

I live in south-east Texas. I’ve run across brown recluses many, many times when doing things like changing light bulbs in outdoor lamps. Never got bit. Like most small critters, they don’t really want to bite you. In fact, they’ll go out of their way not to if you give them a chance, but will if they feel threatened. The upshot is, don’t go sticking your hands in small spaces that you haven’t looked into first.

Really, that’s just common sense. It applies to much more than just Brown Recluse spiders.

By: Lorax

Lorax — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:00:32 +0000

I think the evidence on komodo dragons being venomous (at least to people) is quite weak. They do carry a variety of pathogenic bacteria that themselves make toxins, but thats not the same as venom. I think there was a discovery of potential venom glands, but I dont think the discoverers ruled out other possible types of glands or glandular functions.

By the way I dont think an 8 foot 150lb lizard with razor sharp teeth and a mouth full of septicemic bacteria has much need for venom, but I could be wrong.

By: Rob Jase

Rob Jase — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:54:57 +0000

Can’t say I’ve ever run across a brown recluse but I use to come across black widows while cleaning my parent’s house’s rain gutters. I always found them to be pretty mellow & none ever even tried to bite.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:36:57 +0000

Someday I will have to tell my favorite spider story. Its a great story, but the ending is kind of vague.

And yes, it’s a Pygmy story.

By: rob

rob — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:53:22 +0000

what is the other venomous lizard? i recently read that komodo dragons are venomous. so are there three now, or is the komodo the second?

a, a quick google search revealed the second is the Mexican Beaded Lizards. also, recently monitor lizards have been shown to be venomous (of which the komodo is one) so there are now several poisonous lizards.

gotta google jumping cholla now too.