Brown Recluse Infestation

how can a spider so small cause so much tissue damage???
I just some info about the bite and it seems there is not anyone can do for it. I would hate to have 2-3 spiders bite me same time.

Sasha
 
Living in heavy wooded area I use two approaches to control insects/spiders in my home: On the exterior I get Sevin in a bottle that you attach to a garden hose and spray a perimeter about 10 feet wide all around the house. On the exterior cracks and crevis' I mix Dursband with three (3) tablespoons of Boric acid in two (2) gallons of water in a pump sprayer. For interior living spaces make certain to only use the Microencapsulated Durban so it doesn't turn to aerosolized form. Microencapsulation allows the chemical to dry and remain where you sprayed it and not float in the breeze/air currents in the room. If the Dursban doesn't get them, the Boric acid sticks to their bodies and dissolve the exoskeleton until they literally fall apart. To prevent and/or kill infestations in non-living areas (ie. attice, crawl space ) I make a softball sized clump of powered Sevin and give it a toss to the area(s) most likely to allow insect access. It is a rare ocassion that we see critters in our home, but those that do dare to venture in are not long for this world. Make sure you treat any pets that spend time outdoors before you allow them into the house. It's best to use long acting products on them for both spider bites and ticks/fleas. PS: The Micro-Encapsulated Dursban is getting hard to find since it went under "Ralph Nader" scrutinazation..so if you find some stock up on it to have a year or two's supply.
 
Hey Guys...

Generally if I find spiders in the house, I capture them and release outside.
Unless I happen to have baby critters for a visit that eat them (ducks or other birds) then I will actually go out and collect them for food...

Other than that Spiders don't really bother me too much...

My favorites are those big black and yellow spiders...

All I can say is Thank God I don't live in an area where there are poisonous spiders running around... The Frigging Dog ticks we have are Bad enough!!!

ttyle

Eric
O/ST
 
ras said:
Spiders aren't like cockroaches. Just get a few cans of the good stuff and make your attic, crawlspace and wherever an unwelcome environment. My opinion, YMMV
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Actually the brown recluse is a prolific breeder, and will infest your house much like cockroaches. Here in the south, that is. I can go into my grandad's shop and find 40 in a half an hour easily by just looking in drawers and behind stuff.



Cash2006, "and wonder if I ought to call the exterminator, or just keep killing all that I see."

Are you SURE it was a recluse?? A lot of times there is misidentification. Was it small??? They only get ~ the size of a quarter. If it was big, it was NOT a recluse. Did it have eyes (4 sets in spiders) that are grouped like the ones in the pic below with two sets out wide and two closely into the center of the head?? If not, not a recluse.

Firstly, remember that your house is an ecosystem. There is a balance of food (bugs) and predators living in it. STOP killing all spiders that are not brown recluses. That puts pressure on the recluse, and it'll move out. Wolf spiders are your friend here. They're bigger, and eat other spiders. There are only a few poisionous spiders in America. The rest, read that as the vast majority, are your friend. Having a house full of them keeps the bad ones away simply because they'd have to fight for a limited food supply.

If you start to see them en masse, get an exterminator.



How about some pics???










 
Normark said:
If I was bit by one,, I don't know what I would do either..
We don't have the Brown Recluse here,,so I don't even know what it looks like...
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We don't have them here , but my aunt was bitten by one. We aren't supposed to have Black widows either, but I caught one and turned it into the local university.

I wouldn't rule out some living in Canada.
 
Hey Justin....

Yes,, with the produce that is imported from whereever,, it is possible they are here.. I just haven't seen one...

I wonder if they can survive the winters ??

We aren't suppose to have Possums either but we've got Tons of them here now...

ttyle

Eric
O/ST
 
Most spiders I pick up and release outside. Black Widows don't scare me -- their bite is about the same as a bee sting -- but if I see one it gets smashed. Brown Recluses, however, scare the shit out of me. Evil, evil creature. A brother's Da almost died from a Brown Recluse bite he got at a truckstop in upstate NY. Spider is not natural to NY, and a diet of unfamiliar insects altered it's metabolism and drastically changed the effect of its venom -- one of the top spider bite experts in the U.S. flew in to consult on his case for the hospital. No necrosis at all, but he was in hospital for nearly a month. If he didn't recieve expert medical assistance he'd be dead.

Brown Recluse likes dark places to hide in. Many like to hide in clothes that are tossed on the floor, or in unmade bedsheets. Shake out any clothes, shake out your shoes, and check under the toilet seat before sitting down.

The two basic types of spiders are those who use venom to kill (typically small, with shiny round abdomens) and those who hunt (medium to large, and usually either black or hairy). Find a bunch of large wolf spiders under rocks by the creek, putting them in individual jars (they'll kill each other if they're confined together -- spiders are VERY territorial), then release 'em in your house. :eek: They'll leave you and your family alone, won't spin webs, and will hunt & kill anything smaller than themselves. Other spiders are one of their favorite foods.
 
we have them brown suckers here and I squish'em ,don't want my family to get bit, tyr shawdow is correct on the wolf spiders , black and fuzzy or the gray ones will do the trick, alot of mis-informed people think black wolf spiders are the dreaded black widow just get informed before you kill anything that creeps you out,that little bug maybe helping you out.
 
ah.....i would gas the house just to be sure. these nasty little f'ers were all over the place at Fort Bragg. Guys would wake up with a bite and all the medics could do is sterilize the "crater" and pack it with cotton. The weird part was the skin would usually still be there.....just no meat underneath.
 
tyr_shadowblade said:
Most spiders I pick up and release outside. Black Widows don't scare me -- their bite is about the same as a bee sting -- but if I see one it gets smashed. Brown Recluses, however, scare the shit out of me. Evil, evil creature. A brother's Da almost died from a Brown Recluse bite he got at a truckstop in upstate NY. Spider is not natural to NY, and a diet of unfamiliar insects altered it's metabolism and drastically changed the effect of its venom -- one of the top spider bite experts in the U.S. flew in to consult on his case for the hospital. No necrosis at all, but he was in hospital for nearly a month. If he didn't recieve expert medical assistance he'd be dead.

Brown Recluse likes dark places to hide in. Many like to hide in clothes that are tossed on the floor, or in unmade bedsheets. Shake out any clothes, shake out your shoes, and check under the toilet seat before sitting down.

The two basic types of spiders are those who use venom to kill (typically small, with shiny round abdomens) and those who hunt (medium to large, and usually either black or hairy). Find a bunch of large wolf spiders under rocks by the creek, putting them in individual jars (they'll kill each other if they're confined together -- spiders are VERY territorial), then release 'em in your house. :eek: They'll leave you and your family alone, won't spin webs, and will hunt & kill anything smaller than themselves. Other spiders are one of their favorite foods.
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Great information. Most of the Brown recluses that appear here in New England come up in fruit deliveries from down south. Like Tyr says they are not native to this area.

That is really cool about the poison changing because of its diet changing. I had never heard that but it makes sense. As far as I know the fiddleback is not a web building spider and its main food are other spiders. This guy goes out and hunts things. Its long spindly legs are to navigate on other spiders webs from what I remember reading. Almost every spider species known is poisonous, every one. Most don't have fangs large enough or strong enough to get through human skin.

Black widows on the other hand, before the advant of indoor plumbing most black widow bites occured on a mans privates. Guys would drop their package into the out house and a BW hiding under the opening would bite them. :eek: Thank god for indoor plumbing. :thumbup: I hate outhouses.

KR
 
sasha said:
Normark if i may ask. Why the hand wasnt treated before when it was known that the man had the bite???? I hope its not you in the pic.
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My understanding is that those pics are the work of makeup and special effects, and that the guy in question didn't have a true bite. They were done for an instructional text for medical practitioners.

That said, it's also my understanding that those pictures--although "fake"--are strictly accurate as to how destructive a full dose of fiddleback venom can be.
 
kr1 said:
This is typical of a recluse bite. I have never heard anything about people reacting differently. My understanding is that it causes necrosis (desolving) of flesh. I never heard of a difference between people being bite. The only difference in the bite, like with all poisons, is dosage. More poison more necrotic tissue. Only remedy that I am aware of is the removal of enough tissue early enough to keep it from spreading deeper.

KR
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If everyone reacted like those pictures, you would hear A LOT more about the danger of brown recluse spiders. Do a little searching and you'll find out that different people have different sensitivities to any venomous bite. Some people have little or no ill affects. This is true for any venomous bite - granted the differences in sensitivity for some real dangerous bites (like some of those spiders down under) between people may mean surviving or not surviving.


Read the "bite symptoms" section:

http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/2000/2061.html
 
While the brown recluse venom can cause necrosis to varying degrees depending on the amount of venom injected and the individual's sensitivity to it, the real danger is the secondary infections that occur in the necrotized areas. When you have an open sore that doesn't heal for a long time (like the ones from the spider bite) you are unprotected from infection and can end up with gangrene.
 
This thread reminds me of the old saying, "If nothing else kills you a bear will."

Recluses are something you should know about, but in the grand scheme of things nothing to lose sleep over. Chris
 
Here in Oregom we have few recluse spiders. Most folks treated for spider bite are actually tagged by a hobo spider, which is big. I killed one in the house a few years back that was just booking across the floor. Found 2 more in the house after that. Mostly they are in the garage and barn.

Gene
 
Andy,
Thanks, now I can feel stuff crawling all over me!! LOL!!

I killed a nice recluse on my shampoo bottle in the shower. Just a wee bit close for an early moring encounter! Had a couple run across my hands without biting(thank God). Glue strips seem highly thought of for them indoors. I added to my strip by place a live cricket in the middle of each one. I have met a few people that had been bitten- the scars look like someone held a burning cigar to their skin.
Bill
 
Hey Guys...

Watchful..

I hadn't heard that about these pictures...
If true, they are like you said, Very well done...

Scary none the less..

Thanks for the 411

ttyle

Eric
O/ST
 
Normark said:
I hadn't heard that about these pictures...
If true, they are like you said, Very well done...
Click to expand...

Eric,

They appear on a couple of urban legend pages, but since they're not intended to be hoaxes, they're not dismissed as fakes either.

To be sure, here are some real recluse bite photos. Warning: somewhat graphic, but they're not nearly as graphic as the ones we just saw. You'll also notice how they heal with proper treatment.

Point is: not too different from the so-called fakes. Not at all.
 
lmalterna said:
Andy,
Thanks, now I can feel stuff crawling all over me!! LOL!!


Bill
Click to expand...

LOL. Just remember there's probably 10,000 brown recluse spiders living in your crawl space. Muwahahahahahahaha:p :p
 
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