Spiders

Lothlorien

Active Member
I'm a little freaked right now. I was cleaning PCs room up and organizing his closets and stuff. I found a dead Brown Recluse on top of something. I checked it out on the internet and it's definitey a Recluse. It has a V on it's head. It was dead and I have no clue how long it's been there. We could have even brought it from our old house, because I was pulling out his comfortor and stuff from the old house, when I saw it.

Should I call an exterminator? Should I spray? We have some awful looking spiders around here, but usually they are all outside. I hate the idea of spraying spider stuff in the kids rooms. That stuff is so toxic.
 

WhymeMom?

No real answers to life..
I think I would be calling an exterminator....brown recluse are nothing to mess with....

We have one of the big name exterminators and they just spray around the foundation of the house. It has really cut down on the number of spiders and millipedes in our house. I do see an occasional spider, but we live out in a woods, so I don't expect miracles....
 

scent of cedar

New Member
:eek:

Definitely call an exterminator. Spiders are scary enough when they are not deadly.

You won't have a moment's peace about this until you KNOW there is no brown recluse hiding out in a corner somewhere.

Spiders give me the heebie jeebies.

Barbara
 

totoro

Mom? What's a difficult child?
I would call!!! We have those aggressive house spiders, huge! I call the spider man every spring and fall... our house gets full of them and I am freaked out by them. N is so scared. She was bitten when she was a baby and she swelled.
I have to call pretty soon, they have been sneaking back in with the nights getting cooler! YUCK...

It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't run at me when I was trying to kill them!
 

witzend

Well-Known Member
Brown Recluses and extermination sounds a lot more complicated than most extermination processes. You probably would do just as well to do a thorough cleaning (with gloves and such) and spray or squish them yourself, because you'll have to remove everything from your drawers and closets to have a professional exterminator take care of them.
 

Hound dog

Nana's are Beautiful
I rarely see spiders (except outside), but every year I have one heck of a time keeping up with webs. I must have the fastest spinning spiders on the planet. I no more than sweep the webs down, and whoosh there they are again. :slap:

The other night I did spot one. He didn't live long. The thing was HUGE, I think some variety of wood spider. Seems my cats, and even the dogs manage to kill most of them. (I caught one of the dogs in action last week)

I've never seen a brown recluse here though. (thankfully) But Nichole's friend's baby neice was bitten by one a couple of months ago. The bite has yet to heal completely. :frown: Just when they think they've got it licked, a wicked redness develops at the bite site and they have to put her back on antibiotics.

Nasty lil buggers. :thumbsdown:
 

Marguerite

Active Member
Thanks for the link, Witz. I haven't heard of this beastie before. When I had a look at it I was intrigued to see it looks a lot like our common huntsman spider (although a huntsman is usually a lot bigger, up to a handspan across), which is considered fairly harmless here although its bite can cause problems.
I found a Wikipedia link with more info too - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_recluse_spider

We have a spider called the White-Tailed Spider" which looks quite different but is about the same size. The white-tailed spider has an abdomen shaped like a matchstick, as if the match as a white head. Unusual. But the bite is alleged to cause necrosis. It used to be considered gospel, but now they're saying the same thing as Wikipedia said about the brown recluse bite - that it's often a staph infection (which, from my own experience, could be associated with a spider bite - any spider).
The jury is still out on the topic over here with the white-tails. They have a very similar habit to the brown recluse. Old cardboard boxes are a common location, so we avoid bringing them into the house. It's also how baby cockroaches get into the house after you've exterminated them, yet another reason for avoiding the cardboard boxes.

We live with dangerous spiders here. I'm not comparing or saying, "We're worse off than you, nyaah, nyahh" only to say, we've given up on exterminators. You need different and stronger pesticides to take out spiders and if you only make them sick, it just makes them cranky. I don't want to have to deal with a cranky funnelweb spider - you don't live long enough to have tissue necrosis! Although touch wood, we've not had a funnelweb fatality since the antivenin was developed back in the 80s.
But what works for us - we train the kids, too, from toddlers - always check clothing, shoes, boots, socks - carefully examine it for spiders before you put it on. Do not keep shoes or boots outside the house because more spiders live outside than inside. And if you get bitten, no matter what sort of spider - seek medical attention pronto. If you can identify the spider, even better. It's why I wear thongs (flip-flops) in summer. Nowhere for a spider to hide.
Even with exterminators visiting regularly, you need these precautions.

Our neighbour over the road used to have her place sprayed regularly. And yet she would STILL find funnelweb spiders in the bottom of her swimming pool - they wander in and get trapped. And they can survive under water for a week or more. Frankly, I think they were attracted to her place because of the pool. She eventually had it filled in.

We used to try to catch any we found to send them to the serum laboratories, but there is no need these days. Any nasty spider we find gets the boot. Squish. We keep the huntsman spiders around because they will keep other nasty spiders under control. Not inside the house, though - outside, please. On the tree. They are not aggressive, they only attack when really thoroughly provoked (as when I saw one of our hens trying to eat one - the only time I've ever seen a spider bail up a hen. She'd REALLY got the spider riled!).

Strong suggestion - wear thick rubber gloves when tidying around piles of paper, books and boxes. The brown recluse shouldn't have fangs long enough to go through rubber gloves. And you'd have to clean it all out anyway, for the exterminators.

Marg
 

hearts and roses

Mind Reader
You could do a really good deep cleaning and then keep it up. Bag all your stored blankets, pillows, etc. Clean out cabinets and closets, vacuum well, including all nooks and window jambs, and then empty your vacuum bag. Keep floors, including laundry room of all damp or wet items. Be sure to brush or comb your animals after they've been out roaming around and shake out the door mat regularly.

I was bitten by a recluse years ago. I recall each night seeing this scary looking spider in the corner of my bedroom and thinking it would be bad to kill it so I left it alone. Each night it would be in a different corner of the room. One morning while vacuuming, I saw it dead next to my side of the bed and didn't think anything of it. Within a couple of days, my arm itchy on the forearm. After a day or so it felt numb, completely dead like I couldn't feel a thing and there was radiating pain into my wrist and hand. After another day or so, the skin on my forearm began to peel layers and the skin underneath was a Barbie pink. I went to the ER and they took x-rays - no broken bones. It was deduced that I had been bitten by a spider. I immediately remembered the spider and told the DR. He gave me antibiotics and it took almost another 2 weeks to feel better, almost 4 weeks to completely heal and regain full use of my arm, wrist and hand. Very VERY scary.
 

bby31288

Active Member
OMG...I woke up at 5 this morning with a spider crawling on my face!!!! AHHHHHH

How the heck did that happen? Were did it come from. I grabbed it, it tried to run away and i like slapped my face....

I am afraid to sleep now!!!
 

TerryJ2

Well-Known Member
So sorry, Lothlorien.
Wow. Incredible pictures, Witzend.
I thought brown recluses were smaller and more brown than green.
Almost all our neighbors have had black widows, but I've heard the brown recluse are more often found in the mountains than in the beach areas like where we live. It's still a good idea to keep a lookout.
In yrs past, we've had a beautful Writing Spider (Garden Spider) that was bright yellow and black. Their webs have a zipper effect running along them. Their bite can really hurt so it's best to use a nice lens on the camera so you don't have to get too close. Supposedly that's the spider that gave the author the idea for Charlotte's Web.
We also have wolf spiders... our N Am version of tarantulas. Those things are huge. They don't spin. They dig holes. If they're in the house I kill them. If they're outside I let them live, because they're eating other things I don't want in the house!
So far we've only been bitten by regular spiders and have had no problems.
 

GoingNorth

Crazy Cat Lady
WHen husband and I were stationed in TN years and years ago, we had a gorgeous black and yellow garden spider set up house on the porch of our trailer.

husband, for some odd reason, started putting grasshoppers and moths into her web for her.

It got to the point that she recognized him and as soon as she saw him would run to the center of her web to wait for her 'treat'.

It was fascinating to watch her run out and wrap up her prey. One day he 'twanged' a supporting line for her web and she ran all the way up his arm before realizing he had nothing for her. She was not at all a happy spider. I told him to go catch her something to eat since he'd trained her to be dependent on being fed.
 

hearts and roses

Mind Reader
Last night I had to kill the most ginormous black thin spider (about 2") in difficult child's room. It took me about 7 minutes to muster up the nerve but I did it. And then we vacuumed up his carcus. It was just gross, but it needed to be done.

At one point difficult child suggested I go get H to do it, but at the same time we said, "Nah...we better do this". LOL - it's because H would be annoyed if we woke him up to kill a spider, and once he went in there, he's so loud but slow, that we know the spider would have run off and then difficult child would have had to change rooms...
 
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