Big "Black Widow" today

[Red_desert]

I probably should mention, most of the local cases I've heard about were women. However, there was a diabetic man who had a bite either by the ankle or somewhere on the lower leg. The doctors said gangrene would set in, so they wanted to amputate, take off his foot. We know somebody who also is diabetic, he is the person that met the other diabetic with the spider bite. Advice he had saved the guy's foot, doctor gave him only 2-3 days to reverse the infection. It took extremely large doses of vitamin C during the day. I'd never heard of a person taking that size doses of Vc before, apparently it worked. My mom has 2 friends, one used to be a nurse, the other still is, so she had plenty of medical advice to treat the sore at home. Also no doctor to want the foot cut off, better to keep your foot. Nearly a year before the hole started closing up, took moths to get that way.

 

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[Red_desert]

Haven't seen those here at this altitude, or fiddlebacks either, which I fear more. Still, I have the habit of shaking out my sleeping bag before goin to bed and shakin out my boots before putting them on. (Camping tip: Sleep with your boots in your sleepin bag or inside your tent up here cause we have porcupines and they will chew them up for the salt, if they can get to em.)

They say the Pacific NW has them, parts of California also. These are places supposed to be out of range for the Brown Recluse. People been trying to explain all the reported bites, some said the spider got in car trunks, scientific study has indicated it to be the one in my photos.

 

[Hitndahed]

Having been the victim,,,TWICE of a Brown Recluse,, trust me,,, I would MUCH RATHER "deal" with ANY snake than spiders.
The bites started small and itchy,,, then in a matter of days went to a full blown-self digesting mass of pus.
The second one I actually needed to have it "cored" ,,,like an apple,,to get the enzymes out so it could
begin to heal. MONTHS till they healed,, LOTS of antibiotics too.

I don't like to kill if I don't have to,,, but I always squash spiders since

Hit

 

[RGINN]

Red desert has a point. Fiddlebacks liked to winter in stored tents or sleeping bags in Oklahoma. Since I usually try to camp a little whenever I get to visit Oklahoma, I worry about importing one back. I don't know how long they would survive or be able to reproduce here in this climate, but I don't want to be known as the guy who introduced them to Summit County. Also, black widows, fiddlebacks, rattlesnakes, ticks, etc. are present in Colorado but it seems when you start gettin up around 10,000ft. they can't get established. At least not til our winters get warmer.

 

[texasred777]

Back in Texas, I worked for quite a few years on the gasoline/petroleum equipment at the service stations/convenience stores. I have probably killed as many, if not more black widows than most. They loved the dark areas under the pumps. This was before the 'containment' rules came into being. If it was a pump with just a hole and the piping under it, there was a great chance there would be a black widow in there!
In the mid to late 1950s I spent a week with a friend and his family on a farm south of Waco, Texas. A neighbor woman and her 10 year old son was moving a chicken coop and a black widow bit the boy on the hand. It was some time before he was taken to the hospital. No phone and the dad was at work, with the car. The boy died from the bite.
Here in Idaho, we have the Hobo spider. Looks like a Brown Recluse, but has a white stripe on it's front legs. As far as I know, the stripe is about the only difference between the two. After a bite, the wound will become just a mass of blackened flesh with pus, that keeps spreading until something is done about it; and takes months to heal. I've seen a few black widows here also, but the Hobo is everywhere I look. I've killed several in the house every year, even though Orkin comes be often.
A neighbor woman came by a year or so ago. She had a wound from a spider bite on her ankle. It wasn't all that bad, except, when she went to the doctor, he found one of the spider's fangs in the wound! Wasn't a Hobo, because just a small wound that healed quickly.

 

[DaneMom]

The second hole I dug I came up with a HUGE brown spider. We have Brown Recluse all over here. I freaked out and went running and my hubs came and killed it. I was NOT a happy camper. I hate... no detest spiders.

 

[Red_desert]

Red desert has a point. Fiddlebacks liked to winter in stored tents or sleeping bags in Oklahoma. Since I usually try to camp a little whenever I get to visit Oklahoma, I worry about importing one back. I don't know how long they would survive or be able to reproduce here in this climate, but I don't want to be known as the guy who introduced them to Summit County. Also, black widows, fiddlebacks, rattlesnakes, ticks, etc. are present in Colorado but it seems when you start gettin up around 10,000ft. they can't get established. At least not til our winters get warmer.

Here is a helpful link. There might be a diffence to male and female spider markings. One has only a single chartreuse Katydid on top, the other seems to have double pair of chartreuse stripes on both sides of top. Anyway, if not probably the other subspecies that isn't as toxic.

Identifying and Misidentifying the Brown Recluse Spider [eScholarship]

"The brown recluse spider, Loxosceles reclusa, is often implicated as a cause of necrotic skin lesions.[1-3] Diagnoses are most commonly made by clinical appearance and infrequently is a spider seen, captured or identified at the time of the bite.[1, 2, 4-6] The brown recluse lives in a circumscribed area of the U.S. (the south central Midwest) with a few less common recluse species living in the more sparsely-populated southwest U.S.[7] In these areas, where spider populations may be dense, recluse spiders may be a cause of significant morbidity. However, outside the natural range of these recluse species, the conviction that they are the etiological agents behind necrotic lesions of unknown origin is widespread, and most often erroneous. In some states such as California, unsubstantiated reports concerning recluse spider bites have taken on the status of "urban legend" leading to overdiagnosis and, therefore, inappropriate treatment."

"The name "brown recluse" spider correctly refers only to the midwest species; additional species are known by common names such as the desert recluse, the Arizona recluse, etc. Unfortunately, non-arachnologists incorrectly lump them all under the "brown recluse" moniker. This is a potentially incorrect extrapolation because only the brown recluse has been intensively studied. All recluse species are probably capable of inflicting necrotizing bites, however, there may be behavioral and toxicological differences among the various species. "

"Two other spiders that have the potential to produce necrotizing wounds, though much less well-documented than the brown recluse, are the hobo spider and the yellow sac spider. The hobo spider (Tegenaria agrestis) may be found in the Pacific Northwest as far east as Montana and south into Oregon and Utah. The two yellow sac species (Cheiracanthium spp.) are found all over the United States, but probably only produce minor necrotic wounds. "

 

[Tnmountains]

Not been bit by a spider only a saddle back or stinging hair caterpillar . It won.

 

[Red_desert]

They have a stinging caterpillar in Brazil like that, wonder if it is the same one?

 

[Trooper733]

We have both here in Oklahoma, although where I'm at the fiddleback/brown recluse is more prevalent. My senior year in high school when I was issued my shoulder pads for football season a fiddleback dropped out onto my bicep and bit me. I had a necrotic ulcer that lasted for nearly two months and almost missed football season because of it.