http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_compact_halo_object

There are no populations of brown recluse spiders on the west coast, contrary to popular belief.

They’re everywhere in the South, and they’re famous enough to get blamed for things that happen even in places where they don’t live.

The West coast does have “Hobo” or “Cigar box spiders” which have a necrotic venom too, but it’s not as powerful.

An arachnologist at the University of California, Riverside wrote a nice article expressing frustration at the popularity of the brown recluse as a scapegoat.

One of my sisters was once diagnosed with a brown recluse bite (at least it was in a state they exist in). It was actually a staphylococcus infection (not surprising, those are a hell of a lot more common). It seemed to take one or two more lesions appearing before the doctor decided to give her some antibiotics.

Someone from the Livingston “observatory” told me that he and some others had gone fishing off of one of the beam tubes (there’s supposedly a water-filled ditch alongside it from excavation filled with fish, alligators and various other wildlife).

JPL (another place I’ve interned, but don’t actually work at) has wildlife (mostly deer) running wild all over their campus, and it’s not unheard of that there’ll be a cautionary lab-wide warning that a mountain lion has been spotted on the premises.

WATCH THE SKIES!!!

…for the deadly dropbear of course – thanks for the reminder Peter B

They are most (in)famous for lurking under the seat of outside toilets in the days before access to decent plumbing – it was always a vexed question as to where the tourniqet should go if you were bitten on the buttocks or *ahem* delicate areas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-back_spider
http://www.gonewalkabout.com/got/got_spider.htm

cars
firearms
cheeseburgers
swimming pools
electricity
ladders

animals:

horses
dogs
bees and wasps
Anopheles mosquitos

Don’t worry about snakes, spiders, alligators or terrorists.

But I would never kill something just because I don’t like it. Maybe it’s the Buddhist in me trying to get out! I just don’t see that we have the right to do so. Perhaps if the spider (or snake or whatever) was poisonous and actually posed a threat to me, then fine. That is Darwinian Natural Selection in action! It’s him or me, and I choose me!

But here in the UK, there are no poisonous spiders (except the ones that sneak into the UK in a packet of bananas or something, but they don’t usually last long in our climate…). The ones in my house may be ugly, and may cause me to have a completely irrational fear of them, but they ain’t gonna do me any harm, so there’s no reason to kill them.

Darwin put us on a level plane with all the other creatures on the planet – we ain’t better or worse than any of them. In fact, as survival machines, spiders are WAY better than us! They’ve been around a hell of a lot longer than we have, and they’ll probably still be around long after humans have gone extinct.

“I would have grabbed the snakes and spiders, thrown them in the back of the cart, then headed on over to New Orleans to get them made into a po’ boy sandwich with mayo and a side of red beans.”

Color me skeptical. ;o) Phil, I’d bet that you’d completely “freak out” if you encountered some of our local fauna. Plus, mayo is part of being “dressed” and red beans aren’t normally a side, they’re a traditional Monday meal with rice. Jambalaya would’ve been funnier. ;o)

Happy Mardi Gras everyone!

I had no idea there were places where concentrations of Black Widows and Brown Recluses co-existed with poisonous snakes. It’s like some kind of conspiracy to freak us out! Are they sure it’s not the entrance to some mad arch-villain’s lair?

I respect other animals right to exist (including poisonous ones), but that said, I would not have gone in there without a flamethrower leading the way.

BC: It looks to me like there’s a swamp over there… To me it seems like a dangerous place to build an experiment.
Other Guy: Everyone said I was daft to build a gravity wave detector on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that’s what you’re going to get, lad, the strongest gravity wave detector in all of North America.

Besides, it’s just a theory.

- Jack

As for spiders, I have large wolf spiders in my basement, free roaming, and I love them. They don’t make big webs, are largely harmless to people, and eat any other bugs that may make it into the house. Plus it’s great for scaring the crap out of guests, having three and a half inch spiders scurrying around downstairs.

True bugs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemiptera