tbzep,

If you have recluses in your house, get an exterminator in there pronto! Those bites are NASTY and worth the few hundred to get them all DEAD!

Robert

Robert,

Where do you live? In the south them little bugers are everywhere. I found a black widow in my house this past week. I guess all the rain is driving them indoors.

Yep, take a jacket out of the closet that hasn't been worn for a while, shake it out really good before putting it on. :(

I think he was only joking, at least I hope so!

Perhaps y'all should get the free "Spider Identification Chart" available here:

http://www.termite.com/spider-identification.html

I see that the black house spiders we have aren't as bad as they look, but I sure killed a big one last night :eek:

They are very hard to get rid of because of their...."reclusiveness". IIRC, I was told that the only way to kill them is with a contact poison. That means you have to rip everything out of the house and you still won't get them all because there will be areas you can't get to. They spend very little time out in the open where most sprays or powders would contact them.

Uh, uh, uh...

http://www.highway60.com/mark/brs/casestudy_photos.asp

OMG!!! Is this picture scale to size?

Robert

LOL! I'm not sure how big your monitor is or what resolution it's set at, so I'll guess it isn't a 1:1 scale for you. :D

Most of my adults have legs that will easily spread over a quarter and every now and then I'll see one spreading out about half-dollar size. Mine are a bit fatter in the abdomen than this little guy also. They are very docile. I've had several crawl over my hands out in the shop without biting me. I don't recommend them as pets, however. :rolleyes:

One of these days I'll probably get bit, but my track record is pretty good. I had a hive of honeybees in a hollow tree in my yard for about five years. I climbed up and looked inside several times and mowed around it every week or two and never got stung. I even had them land on me sometimes. That same tree raised four or five families of wood ducks before the honeybees came. I finally cut it down a couple of years ago when it died. I never got a rocket hung up in it either. ;)

My mother got bit back in the late 80's-early 90's by a Brown Recluse spider.
It was NOT a pretty sight that left her in pretty bad shape for 2 weeks and a deep pit in her arm that did not heal fully for about 6 months and left a nasty scar.
The doctors took a couple of days to even realize what the bite was as those spiders were not common in Michigan back then.
Those spiders are extremely nasty and should be avoided at all cost....they are commonly known to aggressively ATTACK humans, no joke.

Michigan? I thought that was way north of where these bugers normally frequent.

That's can't be the same spider. Brown recluse spiders almost never bite unless they feel physical pressure, such as when you roll over on them or shove your arm in a shirt or foot in a shoe where they live.

Believe me, I've done a lot of research, plus I've come in contact with them hundreds of times over the last 15 years. If they were aggressive, I'd have been bitten multiple times by now. I'm not going to purposely touch one, but if he crawls across my hand, I'll let him take his time and enjoy the view because I don't want to accidentally put pressure on him by knocking him off. (Now watch me get bit when I go looking for my "Nostalgia sale paper".) :eek: