Hi all -I moved to Missouri from Maryland about four months ago. Today, when I lifted up a rug to vacuum under it, I had the dubious joy of discovering the carcass of a brown recluse spider. Because the fiend was dead, I had the luxury of taking my time in identifying it and, yep. Recluse.Okay. I am trying not to panic needlessly, but for those of you who live in recluse territory, how worried about this should I be? Right now I do a good vacuuming once a week, going around the floor boards and under furniture. I just bought some sticky traps to put out so I can at least try to figure out how extensive the issue is (and figuring out where to put those when you have a four month old kitten is a battle in and of itself). I'm a little worried because my apartment building is very old, and there are some serious grand canyon cracks between the floorboards and the wall, perfect for the little devils to hide out in no matter how vigorously I vacuum.While I part of me wants to drop everything and find a new apartment ASAP, I feel that that's an expensive undertaking that isn't a real solution - I've heard that in recluse territory up to 80% of buildings have them *somewhere*, so moving every time I see one just doesn't seem like a feasible solution. But I'm so worried about the cats. I'm afraid they'll get bit. I'm going out of town over Labor Day, and I have someone coming in to check on them once a day, but what if something happens while I'm gone? What is the little eight-legged *******s kill us all in our sleep?I know that people and pets can and do live in recluse country, even though they are extremely difficult to exterminate completely. How do you handle this?
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Soooo I just found a dead brown recluse
- Thread starter ellyr
- Start Date
There are several species of spiders that look exactly like brown recluses. Even experts flub this.
http://spiders.ucr.edu/recluseid.html
Try not to worry. Even if it is a BR, the chances of getting bitten are very low.
Get som spider traps (glue taps) to help you feel like you're killing off the spider's in your home.
http://spiders.ucr.edu/recluseid.html
Try not to worry. Even if it is a BR, the chances of getting bitten are very low.
Get som spider traps (glue taps) to help you feel like you're killing off the spider's in your home.
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Despite all the hoopla surrounding the brown recluse, there is still not one PROVEN death due to brown recluse bite.
http://spiders.ucr.edu/avoidbites.html
http://spiders.ucr.edu/avoidbites.html
Their bite is still very dangerous. http://www.emedicinehealth.com/spider_bite_brown_recluse_spider_bite/article_em.htm
If you view the slideshow, pictures 18 & 19 show a very graphic BR bite.
As I said in another thread, my DH nearly lost his leg because of one. Also, the map in the site you posted may only be showing areas where the BR is native. It has been found elsewhere. Including my DH, I know 3 people who have been bitten in Florida. All of them had serious reactions.
Brown Recluse spiders are not agressive, but they are dangerous.
That being said, Ellyr, don't panic. Just stay aware. Aeevr is right - 13 species look like the BR. This spider only bites when threatened. Look before you reach into dark places, and remember to keep those glue traps out of reach of your precious little kitten!
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I was bitten by a brown recluse when I was in high school. I had a general allergic reaction and ended up in an emergency room which was really good because the bite was found very early. It took about a week to recover and it was painful. The main danger with the bite is infection. I grew up in an area where there were a lot of brown recluse spiders but given the number of them in the area there were very few bites.
- Thread Starter Thread Starter
- #6
I called the landlord to see if anyone else in the building had ever reported recluses and nope, just me. They offered to come in and both spray and caulk up some of the massive cracks at the floorboards, so I said yes. I keep worrying that that will make it worse, though - the spraying, not the caulking. I feel that if I don't do anything, though, I'll just keep obsessing (long story short - I have problems with anxiety, so this is kicking me into high gear), so it might be better to just get it over with.
The cats will be boarded that day and night - I feel so sad at the thought of leaving them with the vet for that time, but you gotta do what you gotta do. I guess.
The cats will be boarded that day and night - I feel so sad at the thought of leaving them with the vet for that time, but you gotta do what you gotta do. I guess.
Definitely have the spraying and caulking done! It may not have been one, but better to be safe than sorry. Yes, while it's rare to actually die from one of their bites, you can sure get a bad infection. I've seen some very gruesome looking images of the aftermath of these bites.
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Being from the Greater Kansas City area and having heard about/dealt with these little buggers my entire life I just had to chime in. I loved all manner of creepy crawly things as a child and often had a whole collection of jar kept specimens of every shape and size. I took one such jar to school for show and tell and my teacher nearly blew a gasket. I had six, count 'em SIX, VERY large brown recluse spiders crawling around on some twigs and leaves. I had captured each and everyone of them by hand from the old decrepit barn behind my best friend's house. I was nine at the time. After that I became pretty decent at identifying them. Throughout high school my biology teacher and I participated in a university sponsored study that required we capture, kill, preserve and mail them specimens from multiple locations around the area. Of the 200 or so specimens that I provided (over the course of two years) only one was judged as "possibly not" a brown recluse. By the way, I did not catch any of these by hand.
I was never bitten, even when I was handling them roughly and threatening them with bodily harm. I was in positions where I was caught off guard and actively threatening a spider unintentionally. In other words, perfect bite opportunity, and I was not bitten. This isn't to say that they won't bite, It is merely to illustrate that the chances of being bitten are MUCH lower than the media and even many medical professionals would have you believe. In fact from one of the websites above I have copied a very informative and illustrative paragraphs that underscores that bites are very, very few and far between:
"In its native range, the brown recluse is a very common house spider. A colleague in Missouri found 5 in a child's bedroom one night, a person in Arkansas found 6 living under his box spring in his bedroom, during a cleanup at the Univ. of Arkansas, 52 were found in a science lab that was being used everyday, a colleague found 9 living under one piece of plywood in Oklahoma, a grad student and I collected 40 of them in a Missouri barn in 75 minutes, and would have collected more, but we ran out of vials to house them. One amazing story is an 8th grade teacher in Oklahoma checking up on his students avidly collecting material by some loose bricks around a flagpole on an insect collecting trip. In about 7 minutes, 8 students collected 60 brown recluses, picking them all up with their fingers and not one kid suffered a bite. An even more amazing story is that of a woman in Lenexa, Kansas who collected 2,055 brown recluse spiders in 6 months in 1850s-built home. This family of 4 has been living there 8 years now and still not one evident bite. (see Vetter and Barger 2002, Journal of Medical Entomology 39: 948-951). When you find brown recluses in an adequate environment, you do not find one, you find dozens. And yet, the people who live with these spiders rarely get bitten nor do they run around in constant fear...I was interviewed by a local newspaper reporter looking for a sensationalistic sound bite. The question was, "What do you think the effect of this brown recluse event will have on southern California?" My answer was "All the tourists from Missouri, Arkansas and Kansas are laughing themselves off their hotel beds because a story on one alleged brown recluse spider found in Los Angeles makes the evening news."
Certainly, the caulking and spraying are prudent ideas and being cautious of sticking hands and feet into cool dark places (shoes and slippers left on the floor, gloves that haven't been worn for a season, small spaces under and behind things that aren't moved frequently, etc.) is good advice to live by, but by and large people and recluses can co-habitate quite easily with no deleterious effects to either side. Moreover, the recluse is a fairly voracious insect hunter that will probably keep all manner of pests out of your home.
As for the concern for the cats, that is a tricky one. I have personally seen feral barn cats "playing" with large recluse specimens and have never seen one get bitten or seen a feral cat with a bite that I suspected would be due to a recluse. I have heard stories of house cats that had bites attributed to a brown recluse, but since no one actually saw the bite that attribution is merely a best guess type scenario. Having said that the cat I recently adopted did come with an ulcerated wound between her shoulder blades that upon further research and a bit of luck (the shelter staff killed 10 recluses about 3 weeks ago in the very room she had been kept in) has been tentatively attributed to a brown recluse. There is not, and never will be, any definitive answer but no other explanation makes any better sense. The bite is hideous, slow to heal and has now been infested with yeast and is developing into a suspected case of eosinophillic plaque, but on the grand scale of things it is truthfully not that bad. In fact, Adele doesn't really seem all that bothered by it. Once again, not to say that bites can't be bad, just that bites are rare and complications of bites are even rarer.
I hope this helped and that it wasn't too much for you to wade through.
I was never bitten, even when I was handling them roughly and threatening them with bodily harm. I was in positions where I was caught off guard and actively threatening a spider unintentionally. In other words, perfect bite opportunity, and I was not bitten. This isn't to say that they won't bite, It is merely to illustrate that the chances of being bitten are MUCH lower than the media and even many medical professionals would have you believe. In fact from one of the websites above I have copied a very informative and illustrative paragraphs that underscores that bites are very, very few and far between:
"In its native range, the brown recluse is a very common house spider. A colleague in Missouri found 5 in a child's bedroom one night, a person in Arkansas found 6 living under his box spring in his bedroom, during a cleanup at the Univ. of Arkansas, 52 were found in a science lab that was being used everyday, a colleague found 9 living under one piece of plywood in Oklahoma, a grad student and I collected 40 of them in a Missouri barn in 75 minutes, and would have collected more, but we ran out of vials to house them. One amazing story is an 8th grade teacher in Oklahoma checking up on his students avidly collecting material by some loose bricks around a flagpole on an insect collecting trip. In about 7 minutes, 8 students collected 60 brown recluses, picking them all up with their fingers and not one kid suffered a bite. An even more amazing story is that of a woman in Lenexa, Kansas who collected 2,055 brown recluse spiders in 6 months in 1850s-built home. This family of 4 has been living there 8 years now and still not one evident bite. (see Vetter and Barger 2002, Journal of Medical Entomology 39: 948-951). When you find brown recluses in an adequate environment, you do not find one, you find dozens. And yet, the people who live with these spiders rarely get bitten nor do they run around in constant fear...I was interviewed by a local newspaper reporter looking for a sensationalistic sound bite. The question was, "What do you think the effect of this brown recluse event will have on southern California?" My answer was "All the tourists from Missouri, Arkansas and Kansas are laughing themselves off their hotel beds because a story on one alleged brown recluse spider found in Los Angeles makes the evening news."
Certainly, the caulking and spraying are prudent ideas and being cautious of sticking hands and feet into cool dark places (shoes and slippers left on the floor, gloves that haven't been worn for a season, small spaces under and behind things that aren't moved frequently, etc.) is good advice to live by, but by and large people and recluses can co-habitate quite easily with no deleterious effects to either side. Moreover, the recluse is a fairly voracious insect hunter that will probably keep all manner of pests out of your home.
As for the concern for the cats, that is a tricky one. I have personally seen feral barn cats "playing" with large recluse specimens and have never seen one get bitten or seen a feral cat with a bite that I suspected would be due to a recluse. I have heard stories of house cats that had bites attributed to a brown recluse, but since no one actually saw the bite that attribution is merely a best guess type scenario. Having said that the cat I recently adopted did come with an ulcerated wound between her shoulder blades that upon further research and a bit of luck (the shelter staff killed 10 recluses about 3 weeks ago in the very room she had been kept in) has been tentatively attributed to a brown recluse. There is not, and never will be, any definitive answer but no other explanation makes any better sense. The bite is hideous, slow to heal and has now been infested with yeast and is developing into a suspected case of eosinophillic plaque, but on the grand scale of things it is truthfully not that bad. In fact, Adele doesn't really seem all that bothered by it. Once again, not to say that bites can't be bad, just that bites are rare and complications of bites are even rarer.
I hope this helped and that it wasn't too much for you to wade through.
- Thread Starter Thread Starter
- #9
Not too much to wade through at all, and it's good to hear from someone who's from this area and has experience with them! It sounds like the best thing is to go ahead with the spraying and caulking, keep the glue traps out, just be aware, and try not to panic.
