From a bb dedicated to a musician I especially enjoy (source here, posted by WurlWynd):
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Get this – 3 hours before Rita was to hit us, I was out by my pastures securing a bunch of woodpiles and loose tin. I was dragging a pile of tin to a stand I made to tie them down out of the wind, and I feel what I can only describe as the most painful thing I have ever felt in my life. A white hot needle of pain, laced with tens of thousands of volts, hit my left forearm.What I was feeling was the loving caress of one of the biggest Black Widow Spiders I have ever seen in my life. The pain was so extreme that it crystallized the moment in time for me. The red-orange hourglass appeared to be fluorescent, lit by a black light as big as the sun, and the slick black skin looked like it was covered in oil.
I immediately killed the spider, picked it up and walked inside the house. I have a snake bite kit made by a company called Sawyer – the kit is “The Extractor” and has a series of cups and a large vacuum syringe to apply suction to a venom entry point. After I washed and shaved the bite area, I sat down and applied suction. I took a sedation dose of Benadryl and a huge dose of Robaxin. I called my neighbor, the only one for about a mile or so (he is an MD, thankfully) and we put a blood pressure cuff on my other arm and checked my bp every 5 minutes or so for a couple of hours. My bp and pulse went sky high, and the cramps were pretty bad in my hands, back, and get this – my feet! After about 15 minutes of this, my meds started to kick in. It got way easier to breathe, the cramping went away and the pain REALLY decided to start going in my arm. Imagine a tube of white-hot lava radiating from your shoulder to your pinky, pulsating with every heartbeat. Arghh….
As soon as I could move without screaming, I went back out there, secured the tin, and hung out with my horses all night. Oh, I hung out with a bunch of Vicodin too.
Could not play guitar for four days. Well, I could, but I sucked way worse than normal.
One site among many:
Black Widow Spiders - DesertUSA
[This message has been edited by Keeley (edited September 27, 2005).]
So--they may be aggressive at times, but somehow I escaped.
Shane
I used to live in Northern Ontario, and the spiders there were tiny. Now I live in central Japan, and the bugs here are massive. I don't think we have any black widows though.
Ronnie
*As I jump up and down, wiping away the imaginary creepie crawlies.*
Thanks for creeping me out!!!
All spiders, by the way, are venomous; even a daddy long-legs. Some just have more powerful venom than others. The hairs on a tarantula's body and legs will create an alergic reaction in many people. The Goliath spider, native to South America, will spin webs that capture BIRDS for its dining pleasure. These spiders, btw, retail for thousands of dollars in pet stores. If I recall, when I worked as Advertising Manager for a pet store business with 17 locations, the going rate for a Goliath spider was about $1000... wholesale.
I woke up early one morning and sleepily watched a spider walk across the ceiling. It positioned itself right above me, then began lowering itself on a thread. I waited til the sucker was about 6 inches from my face before I rolled out of bed and got a kleenex to kill it with. I shudder to think if I hadn't woken up when I did. I had another spider episode when I went to do some early spring gardening. I hadn't had my garden gloves (which were stored in the shed) on since the previous fall. As I was slipping my hand into a glove, the thought crossed my mind: "Sure hope there isn't a spider in here." Yes, the next moment I felt a stinging fiery pain. Bit. This spider bite sent red streaks up my arm and took about 6 weeks to recover from. I never saw the spider, but I imagine I crushed it to death when I stomped the glove. Lesson: never put an appendage in an article of clothing you haven't shaken out.
I have a friend who was raised in Arizona and New Mexico. She says we have "toy" bugs and snakes here in Oregon. I don't WANT to see HER idea of a spider.
I'm checking the sheets before I get in bed tonight. *Blah!*
We had a couple of run-ins with brown recluse spiders a couple years ago, but luckily none of them resulted in a bite. The few spider bites my kids have gotten have all been from relatively harmless spiders.
I've got other freaky stories to tell regarding spiders, but I think I'll refrain. Mostly because I know I'll creep myself out.
I will say that I dread getting out the seasonal clothes or any stored baby clothes. I also freaked when I found my kids playing in among the stored clothes, trying them on. Time to teach them to shake clothes out first.
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I knew a guy (one of my "Internet Fan Fiction" buddies, actually) who got bit by a brown recluse spider years ago and was still recovering from the aftereffects. It strikes me that a spider-bite of this kind is a serious matter, and your guitarist friend might be in for more than he anticipates.
He's requested the link to this thread, so I don't think I'll PM him about any aftereffects -- I don't want to go out of my way just to freak him out.
I really hope he doesn't suffer any further from this. And he was bit in his left arm, too.
Spiders never used to bother me. Then, when I was about ten years old, my mom accidently backed into a spider web with baby spiders on it and was bitten several times (fortunately the venom wasn't particularly powerful). Once I knew that spiders could bite, I developed an instant fear. <shudder>
Strange that the same thing didn't happen with ants after I read Leiningen versus the Ants. Of course if I ever see an ant that is as long as my thumb, I will most likely freak out.
[This message has been edited by Robyn_Hood (edited September 28, 2005).]
A month back, a big garden spider decided to spin a web at my back door, I had been about to take the trash out, opened the back door, and heard a rattling sound. It was the spider building its web. I went around the house and sprayed it with bug spray, it came down the wall while I kept spraying it. I thought it was going to come after me, but it eventually stopped on the ground and shrivled up.
My Dad was a "91-Bedpan," a combat medic, in the Army and told me horror stories about those buggers. Those old, wooden latrines out on the Army post ranges were favorite hang-outs for brown recluse spiders. He had to treat several bites that guys got on those intimate body parts that come into contact with or invade twilight regions under the wooden seats. Ugly, ugly little bastard spiders.
Actually, now that I think on it a bit, I recall a number of incidents where troops and bugs and such have had a tussle with one another. Usually the poor soldier comes out on the losing end.
While we were playing OPFOR aggressors in an exercise, one of my guys took up a position that was a very poor choice. No, the cover and concealment were adequate, but he didn't notice that the position was already occupied. Fire ants swarmed him. We had to rush him to an LZ for a medevac.
One guy took the shovel and toilet roll out into the woods (back before the Army would contract for port-o-lets delivered to the training areas) and dug his hole too near a wasp nest. We heard a scream and then saw him tear out across the woodline with one hand holding his trousers up and the other swatting at attacking wasps. We had to pull him out of a pond and rush him to the emergency room.
Another guy was slow to get out of his bag for a predawn stand-to. I crawled into his GP-tiny with a red-lens flashlight to roust him out and found his whole face pale and his eyes swollen shut, which is hideous under red light! We never found out what bit him in his sleep, but the emergency room doctors treated him and he recovered, though he was weak and looked like tee-total-hell for about a week.
Whenever I have a story that includes troops -- especially green troops -- campaigning in foreign lands where they're unfamiliar with the local nasties, I consider adding in an incident of this sort... or at least have a character who knows of the threat warn them of it, etc. Sometimes it'll fit; sometimes it gets cut in revision.
All other spiders I regard with my usual respect for eight-legged life forms, meaning I do not deliberately kill them.
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Well who knows, you may have spawned a rash of arachnophobia stories...just in time for Hallowe'en!
I can live with that. 
Ugh... what a monster. Then, I had the misfortune of seeing the results of bites.
No more spider talk!
Ronnie
I have been suffering some aftereffects - mostly nerve spasms and cramps in my left arm from pinky to elbow, and a hollow leaden feeling in my entire forearm.
There is a small tight knot of fear in my stomach that the sensations will not abate. Indeed, the nagging pain and sluggishness have gotten stronger in the past two days. Every so often the electric tube of lava reappears from my pinky to my shoulder, just for a moment, only to be replaced with a bone-deep ache that takes hours to fade away. I fear for my acuity and stamina upon the fingerboard.
I suppose it is to be expected. Neurotoxins are not something to scoff at...
from: http://spiders.ucr.edu/daddylonglegs.html
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The creatures most correctly called daddy-longlegs are in their own separate Order which is Opiliones. Common names for this Order are 1) daddy-longlegs, 2) harvestmen and 3) opilionids. They are characterized by having one basic body segment which shows segmentation on the posterior portion, at most 2 eyes and all 8 legs attach to the pill-like body segment...Another creature often called daddy-longlegs are actually spiders. These long-legged spiders are in the family Pholcidae. Previously the common name of this family was the cellar spiders but arachnologists have also given them the moniker of "daddy-longlegs spiders."
There are pictures of both species on the referenced URL page. We have the Pholcidae version...true spider... here in our region. Trust me, they DO bite. However there was no long-term problem as a result, it just hurt like the dickens. I suppose they were objecting to being handled by an eight-year old child, which was the last time I was stupid enough to play with them.
My favorite spider story was about the filming of the movie "Arachnophobia." The crew had purchased several EXPENSIVE goliath spiders for that film... and we are talking thousands of dollars for these spiders. I remember reading an interview with the actor in the film. He talked about a scene where a bookcase accidently toppled over on him, pinning him underneath. The director and crew were horrified. "Bob! Are you all right??" they all cried in alarm. Bob was the name of the expensive Goliath spider, the spider star of the show. Bob survived the accident. The actor was unhurt as well.
Which is not a spider.
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Interesting forum. Glad to be directed here by chance.
Nice to see you here.
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I have been suffering some aftereffects - mostly nerve spasms and cramps in my left arm from pinky to elbow, and a hollow leaden feeling in my entire forearm...
Shoot. I had no idea the effects could be long-term until Robert Nowall mentioned it. From what I've been reading through Google, the worst will be over within several weeks. I hope your arm heals completely, WurlWynd, the sooner the better.
[This message has been edited by Keeley (edited September 29, 2005).]
Of course, he also had an aluminum foil liner in his hat to shield his thoughts from the CIA's microwave transceivers.
I can live with that!
You guys should see the brown recluse hatchery I have in my 130+ degree attic.
Makes my skin crawl, but there is nothing I can do short of replacing all the insulation in the attic. Um, hiring someone to replace it, that is...
I see them every so often. Evil, alien looking things.
The widow, however, has several more orders of magnitude of "otherness."
That shiny black skin looks like it came from a Sci-Fi nightmare to me.
I am one of those persons that itch like heck if I get bit by a daddy long legs. I do not want to know what any seriously viscious venom would do to me.
I have a trantula in my fantasy novel. He's a pet of my villan god and at times the god will take on the form to feed on his vitim. (Yes he is a vampire of sorts)
*shivers....
The only thing my friend saw was me spitting and going "PUAH!!!" and a bug flying from my mouth.
He ask, "Did you have that in there the whole time?"
Oh-- another time, years later, I was in a meeting at work, sitting in the corner with a cup of water. My armhair stirred but I didn't think much of it, I looked down eventaully and saw a tiny spider on my arm. Ordinarilly I wouldn't be afraid of anything that small, but it caught me by suprise.
I stood up and yelled, the water in my cup spilling against the wall. Neither my manager nor my coworkers saw the tiny spider, they just saw me stand up, yell and throw my water against the wall.
Talk about the important of viewpoint.
[This message has been edited by ChrisOwens (edited December 13, 2005).]
That's a funny story about bob the goliath spider. I guess I'll have to watch that movie again, because I don't remember the spiders being particularly large.
Now I can share a new link I found:
http://www.tesarta.com/
The site is for RPG gamers, but the info works equally well for writers.
Has anybody seen pictures of those so called "clock spiders?" floating around the web? What is the actual name for that species? They're creepy and very large, I'm almost wondering if they're urban legend cooked up by photoshop enthusiasts.
Do a google image search you'll find something.
~E
Nope, its a true story. The spider in question was a Huntsman Spider and they do grow to be up to 8 inches across. The one in the clock pictures was probably 5-6 inches. The clock wasn't as big as we assume because it looked like a common clock that is 10-12 inches across when the actual clock from the pictures was probably 8 inches across.
Still, a six inch legspan is HUGE when talking something in the house that you didn't buy in a pet store.
I have a friend who was in the Marines until recently. He told me a story about one of his training missions somewhere in Southeastern Asia. He and his squad were walking through the jungle, and suddenly one of his buddies ran right into a huge spiderweb...the thing stretched between two trees at least 20 feet apart! Then, a few minutes later, another friend of his was just walking along, and something thunked down on his helmet. He didn't know what it was for that first split-second, until eight HUGE legs dangled down around the front and sides, plucking at his face. My friend said it was the first (and only) time he'd witnessed a fellow Marine run away screaming like a little girl.
True story...and he assured me he wasn't lying or exaggerating about the size of the spider. I trust this source. Geez...I don't have a fear of spiders (and have even let a few varieties like tarantulas crawl on me) and this creeps the hell outta me!
Inkwell
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"The difference between a writer and someone who says they want to write is merely the width of a postage stamp."
-Anonymous
That spider gives me the creeps! If I ever meet up with one, I will scream first and ask questions later.
Brown Recluses are an absolute menace in the Southern US, I think. They do get into laundry, drawers, etc. Had one wander onto and across my infant daughter one time. Hate 'em.
Black widows absolutely creep me out. I used to see a lot of them, it seemed, when I was kid out west. They love all the little holes in the gray cement brick walls that were everywhere.
If I lived in Australia, I think I would live in perpetual fear of funnel-web spiders. Big, very venomous, and hidden away in inconvenient places.
I find the footage of birds or bats caught in goliath/bird-eating spider webs to be deeply disturbing.
I used to work as a late-night security-type in college. One night I was staring up at a hideous crab spider in its web -- completely mesmerized by it's grotesqueness -- when my co-worker snuck up and tapped me on the shoulder. Major cardiac seizure. I about had to kill him.
Nothing else in the animal kingdom really bothers me -- except roaches, which are just gross.
[This message has been edited by Lanius (edited December 17, 2005).]
[This message has been edited by Lanius (edited December 17, 2005).]
I am totally creeped out now. My curiousity gets the better of me, I hear about all these horrible spiders and I look up pictures of them.
Oh. O_O Just as I was writing that, a hair on my arm pricked up. Terrifying after reading this thread, lol. I remember one day, I was probably 8 or 9, I was in the downstairs bedroom reading a book, and I felt something on my arm. I jumped up, might have let out a scream (can't remember - I think I did), shaking myself violently, flinging my arms around in an attempt to get the spider off. It wasn't really that big, but yeah.
I hate spiders. I haven't always, but since I was about 8 (around then) I have. On the topic of bugs, I'm reminded of something. There were these HUGE bugs, I think they were called Spruce Bugs.
Here's an image link to the only one I could find -- http://images.google.ca/images?q=tbn:LHKbrNGGZnAJ:dannyayers.com/images/bug-book.jpg
They were big, and they made extremely annoying noises. There were rumors from different kids that if you split them in half by pulling on their antennaes (sp?) that it was good luck! I mean, really! That's disgusting!
I love spiders. For a very long period of time I wanted to be an entomologist, my main focus being spiders. I mean, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't jump up and down at the prospect of being bitten by a brown recluse, but they fascinate me.
If it helps anyone here with their fear of poisonous spiders, there is a very low chance of dying from a spider bite, if you even git bitten at all. With all the anti-venoms around hardly anyone dies anymore. I mean, they still do, but it's fairly uncommon. Apparently, there aren't any poisonous spiders that can kill 10%+ of their human victims. No one has died of a black widow bite in America for over 10 years, and no one has died in Australia from any real, proven bites since 1979.
I might add that most of the deaths from spider bites are those who are at risk, like the elderly. If you're healthy, you aren't facing a very high risk.
P.S I do believe that what I have just said is true, but since I don't live in any of the countries I have just talked about, nor have I ever come in contact with any of the spiders I have just talked about, I cannot claim that the above paragraphs contain the absolute, 100% truth. As well, I don't know when the statements above were recorded (not by me, by the people who recorded them originally) so it's quite possible that the facts have changed.