I am not the best at identifying spider species, so I took pictures of it before I separated its spirit from its earthly tabernacle. Living in the desert, I am only concerned about two species of spiders: the ubiquitous black widow and the brown recluse. This was obviously not a black widow, so I Googled the brown recluse. Fortunately, our spider did not fit the profile.However, looking up the brown recluse, I found the following news story:
RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- A UC Riverside study shows that where brown recluse spiders are common, people can co-habitate with them and bites are infrequent. The study by Rick Vetter, staff research associate in the department of entomology at UC Riverside and an internationally known expert on spiders, focused on 2,055 brown recluse spiders collected in a Kansas home of a family of four. Despite the abundance of spiders, no one in the family received bites from the potentially dangerous arachnids.I know the point of the story is that the brown recluse might not be such a big threat, but I kind of lost any possibility of not being completely creeped out when it said the researchers found 2,055 brown recluse spiders in one house. Now I'm a tolerant guy, but I cannot imagine sharing my home with 2,055 brown recluse spiders. I'm pretty sure that I could not sleep another night in that house.
At least we have the comfort that our bug defenses are working, somewhat. We found the beauty below, which was TWO INCHES from tip to tip, stuck in the sticky trap at the corner of our garage door. However, without the trap, we wouldn't have even known such a creature was lurking around in our garage. As it turns out, the trap has probably caused more discomfort than peace of mind. It's kind of like the ocean: if I could actually see what was swimming near me, I would probably spend a lot more time building sand castles!
All I can say is 2,055! I mean, sheeesh, what finally motivated them to take care of the problem.
"Uh, honey, we now have over 2,000 brown recluse spiders in our home. Do you think we should we call an exterminator?"
"Yeah. 1,900 was okay, but over 2,000, well, that's just a few too many."
4 comments:
uhggg... Major chills running down my spine! My hairs are all standing up straight!
Do you think those fuzzy fury spiders like soft snuggly babies? Just wondering.
When we were finding a house out here, we stayed at my friend's parent's place in the upstairs bedroom. Little open trap boxes were placed all around the room and around the bed. "Don't mind those", they say. "They are just brown recluse traps!" Yeah, I didn't sleep very well.
Aaah! I don't do well with big spiders. I new a guy who got a bite from a brown recluse spider and now he has a whole on his calf where flesh once was. Very scary.
I would have to side on being intolerant of spiders in the home.
That's scary--the pictures give me the creeps. I believe Vegas is known for brown recluse. I saw one in a swimming pool when I was down there last time.
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