I don't know what it is about this year; there seems to be an invasion of black widows. I must have killed 15 from the start of the summer, and those are the ones that I can see! God only knows how many I would find if I actually looked. One even made home on my babies.. Has anyone else had this problem? One had landed on my shoulder but I didn't pay much attention as I thought it was a fly. I turn my head to see one webbing off my shoulder sleeve!! I was pestering it. I'm lucky I wasn't bitten.
I killed a huge ass one earlier, was staring at me from a wall. Killed it with an ols skateboard. :lol: Sent from my SGH-T839 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
That's odd. I live in a widow-infested home, and they never really cause problems for me. I've never had one land on me. The only problems i have with them, is when they block something i need access to and i dont want to hurt them to get to it. The venom of Latrodectus species is horrifically over-blown by the media. In reality, only a small percentage of widow bites actually become medically significant. In fact, your at a greater risk of developing psychosomatic symptoms caused by the media-induced panic of this species. When I get bit by them, i just take a couple of ibuprofen and an antihistamine, that's all you really need. The antivenin for this species actually ends up doing more damage than the bites themselves, if you go to a hospital for a black widow bite, they'll just give you an antihistamine shot, and tell you to quit bitching, lol
God.... now I have the creepy-crawlies. Growing up on a farm we had plenty of livestock and one of my jobs was to feed them. My dad drilled it into my brain that you never stick your hand or feet in ANYTHING without looking. We have tons of black widows and bark scorpions. It's a habit that I still do to this day. I shake out my shoes before I put them on and I always look in a bag before I stick my hand in. When I was 12 I was visiting relatives in Dulce. My mother was half Apache and her family resides on the Jicarilla reservation. I was hanging out with my cousins and having fun herding sheep and going into the mountains on horseback looking for lost cattle. I had another cousin whose family lived in Gallup and she came to stay as well. She was city born and bred and had no clue how to function on a farm. It was pretty funny actually. She broke her nose one time trying to out-butt a goat. Anyway, one day we were sent to feed the chickens in the pen and there was an outbuilding where they kept the feed. Well this crazy-ass cousin of mine ran ahead because she wanted to feed the chickens by hand. She thought they were cute (chickens are disgusting). She opened the door and immediately shoved her hand down into the feed bag with me yelling at her stop. She got tangled up in a black widow web. The spider was trapped in the web that was attached to her arm. It bit her 4 times before we could get it off. By the time we got her to the house she had passed out. My grandmother ran outside to gather some herbs and mud to leach the poison and help heal the bites. The pain around the bite was intense but the freakish thing was her eyelids got really swollen. I thought she was going to die. They did a ceremony over her that lasted 4 days. For months afterwards she would be going about her business and then just pass out. No warning or indication it was going to happen. She just fell. Ever since then I've had a phobia with black widows.
I was recently bit by one. Wasn't going to go to the hospital until necrosis began. It swelled up, pretty big. Went to hospital where they lanced, and drained it.(Super painful) I was prescribed 2 antibiotics, and was supposed to go back for them to mess with the gauze packing.. Never did.
Are you sure that wasn't a Recluse? I've never heard of a Black Widow bite causing necrosis. Black Widow venom is a nuero-toxin that causes paralysis (for insects).
Any spider bite requires prompt washing. If you touch or scratch at the bite, it introduces bacteria from your fingernails, which are pretty much the dirtiest part of your body, in turn causing necrosis. Even mosquito bites can result in necrosis. Puncture wounds have a nasty habit of sealing all the worst bugs, unlike a laceration or cut, which can be cleaned more easily. In addition to this, some bacteria can also cause lesions resembling an insect bite, complete with intense itching and swelling, which really looks like a bad bite, but is in reality a severe infection.
I wouldnt consider that a phobia, that is a really legitimite fear xD Sent from my SGH-T989 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
MRSA. I've had a MRSA scrubdown before. They stripped me naked and took wire brushes (plastic actually) and scrubbed my ass from head to toe. It fucking hurt. I re-enacted the radiation scrub from Silkwood. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvcZuzzVmIg
First of all, spiders aren't bugs. They're spiders, and they eat bugs. Second of all, they're not pests, and they've done a great job keeping cockroaches and other nasty critters out of our home. Any animal that prevents a species that's known for contaminating food and spreading Hep A from colonizing my home is welcome to stay. Third of all, SORRY for displaying altruism. Lol good lord.
I do the same thing with anything that I can grab. I live on a farm as well. I watched something as a kid where a lady out here boot on and got bite by a BW. I shake the hell out of my shoes now.
I'm just glad I don't live in the era of outhouses. My dad said he used to take a stick and run it around the opening to knock the black widows off. ::shudder::
Not seeing the creepy factor. People fear what they don't understand. I know so much about this genus, the venom they produce, and how to reverse the effects, that they're no different than a wasp or bee to me. Even Loxoceles reclusa, the brown recluse, has been falsely attributed to severe necrosis. While it's true their venom can cause MINOR necrosis, the horror stories of people losing fingers and hands to their bites are MYTHS. Observe the image below, often falsely associated with either widows, solifugae, and recluse spiders. Chances are, you've all seen that photo, it's continually re-posted by alarmist trolls. However the TRUE cause of that bite was this species right here: Doesn't look remarkable or scary. looks very bland and harmless. That's a Sand Spider, the most dangerous spider on earth. No antivenin exists. Bites are likely to result in amputation/death. Shouldn't be reaching into a dark corner to begin with. natural selection at work
When I was really little I remember catching a few in a field, I had them in a cooler and was playing with them with my G.I. Joes and ended up squashing them, lol. I didn't know what kind of spiders they were, I live in Minnesota so they are pretty rare.