Creepy & Crawly

Oh, great. My area is full of brown recluses and black widows already, not to mention the coming fire ants and the dogs with the killer bees in their mouths who when they bark shoot bees at you. Ok, maybe not that last part, but anyway, now there’s another poisony creepy creature to worry about, making its way north:

JACKSON, Miss. – As if the West Nile-toting mosquito isn’t enough to worry Mississippians, add the poisonous Latrodectus geometricus to the state’s list of creepy-crawly creatures.

Dr. Jerome Goddard, entomologist with the Mississippi Department of Health, said the poisonous Brown Widow spider that is a cousin to the well-known Black Widow, is now calling the Mississippi Gulf Coast home.

“The tropical Brown Widow spider …. has recently been captured in many locations along the Mississippi Gulf Coast,” Goddard said in a news release Tuesday.

[…]

“I’ve gone down to the Gulf Coast several times and looked for myself,” he said. “They are, indeed, in many places.”

He said the spider probably made its way to Mississippi from Florida through commercial imports of plants, food, building materials, or furniture.

The brown widow, unlike the black widow, is not deathly poisonous, so would it be still be too mean-spirited of me to wish that one of them bites Jonah Goldberg on the ass?


I don’t wanna sound like an idiot or nuthin’, but I think invasive species kick ass!

 

Comments: 34

 
 
 

I had a brown recluse bite me once.  Seriously, I thought I was going to lose my leg and the doctor wouldn’t rule it out as a possibility.  I still have a totally awesome scar where they cut a chunk as big around as a quarter out of my leg… without anesthetic.

Good times, good times.

 
 

brown is the new black.

 
 

Insects will inherit the earth. They’ve already taken Washington.

 
 

There may be hope for some relief from fire ants down here. Unless these new spiders eat all the damn predator flies, I mean. D’oh!

 
 

The trick is to convince Goldstein that the spider is a liberal, so as that he’ll try to slap on with his cock.

 
 

I’d rather he were bitten by fire-ants, there’s many, many more of them per square inch.

 
 

I don’t know if there are enough fire ants in the country to do damage to Pantload’s fat ass.

 
 

brrr………I live in South Florida.

Don’t even talk about insect bites to me.

I’ve got a dozen bites on my legs at the moment that are either chiggers or spiders or the evil minions of Satan come to torment me for my godless ways.

Either way, all I know is that I’ve scratched myself raw in my sleep the last three nights.

I really don’t like Florida. Can’t wait to go.

 
 

I still have a totally awesome scar where they cut a chunk as big around as a quarter out of my leg… without anesthetic.

How many brown widow spiders would you need to cover the Pantload’s pantload with quarter-sized holes? Who’s gonna do the videogame for us? I’ll bet that would be one heck of a fund-raiser for some worthy Democratic office-seeker!

And if Jonah bitches, we tell him that brown widows are all part of the Economic Magic of the Global Economy, and therefore sacrosanct. While he’s trying to figure out what ‘sacrosanct’ means, we sicc him on Professor Friedman, who is probably trying to write a column in defense of invasive poisonous insects even as we read.

 
 

Thank you, Annie Laurie, for noting the connection of invasive species to globalisation.

And if Jonah bitches, we tell him that brown widows are all part of the Economic Magic of the Global Economy, and therefore sacrosanct. While he’s trying to figure out what ’sacrosanct’ means, we sicc him on Professor Friedman, who is probably trying to write a column in defense of invasive poisonous insects even as we read.

If I remember my history right, in the 15th Century, Tomas Friedmandos and Jonas Goldbergia of Spain, renowned pundits, applauded the appearance of the syphillis spyrochete in the ports of that country and at the same time enthused over the exportation of smallpox virus to the Americas. That bit of the Columbian Exchange turned out well — after all, it was part of flattening the world, and was just a part of progress; hell, one might even think of it as charity, those subsistence farmers of the Americas reaping so many benefits from contact and trade liberalization.

 
 

My neighbor has brown recluse spiders in his basement. It sure is something else when you’re drinking and playing foosball and the damn things are coming down from the ceiling. A coworker also got bit by one of the things too. His arm has been in a wrap and receiving antibiotics for two weeks now.

Thank you global warming for extending the range of the brown recluse this far north!

 
General Woundwort
 

The Brown Widow and the Brown Recluse are not the same species at all, or even in the same genus. The Recluse (sometimes called a fiddleback, because of the violin shaped marking on its back) lives throughout the south-central US. It is found as far north as Ohio, and you do NOT want to be bitten by one. While not considered deadly, it causes tissue necrosis (as mentioned above) and the bites can be quite nasty.

The Brown Widow (which has an orange hourglass marking, much like the Black Widow’s red hourglass) is new to Mississippi, but is also found in some of the other southern coastal states. The Brown Widow’s venom is actually even more potent than the Black, but it generally remains localised, and does not spread throughout the body like the Black. Therefore, it is much less likely to kill you.

Of the three spiders, the one that is the worst to be bitten by, typically, is the Recluse (which is, just to be clear, in a completely different genus, Loxoscles. Widows are genus Latrodectus). While Black Widow bites occasionally kill (it is very rare), almost all Brown Recluse bites cause serious tissue damage. Many more people have lost limbs to the Recluse than have lost lives to the Widow.

This has been your unnecessary lesson in Arachnology. Please don’t squish the spiders – they are our friends!

 
 

I did not mean to imply that they were the same species, General Woundwort.

I know all about brown recluses — ugh — and they are most certainly not my friend. They are everywhere here, and as someone mentioned, do love to drop from ceilings — a bit of sneakery/suprise attack before the bite. I will have a heart attack one day from it. Also, IIRC, the treatment for the necrosis caused by the bite is… fucking thalidomide! But then the bite does have a leprosy-Hanson’s effect.

I’m pretty sure I’ve been bitten by one. I’ve had a spot on the tip of my thumb that peels and peels for years now, and itches every once in a while like a motherfucker. Knew a girl here who was bitten on the neck in her sleep — she nearly died. Knew another girl here — supermodel gorgeous, too, tall and dark complected with glorious long legs — who was bitten real good on the lower thigh while she slept. She has a huge scar like a puncture wound from it; poor girl is still self-conscious about it and hasn’t worn a shortskirt since.

I hate poisonous spiders.

 
 

Please don’t squish the spiders – they are our friends!

Friends don’t let friends get tissue necrosis.

 
General Woundwort
 

Retardo,

My comments were not really aimed at you so much as at some of the commenters (jrm78, Annie Laurie) who seemed to be confusing the two spiders. While the bite of the Brown Widow is not a pleasant experience, its effects tend to be less permanent than the Recluse, and therefore it is considerably less mean-spirited to wish one of them on Jonah’s posterior.

If I am going to wish for a Spider bite, I would have to go with a Brown recluse, with sufficient necrosis to require amputation, on one of the following body parts:

Rush Limbaugh’s tongue

Jeff Goldstein’s cock (so he stops slapping people with it)

or Ann Coulter’s adam’s apple

Of course, I am very, very mean-spirited. And some of my best friends are spiders.

 
TritoneSubstitution
 

Latrodectus Mactans and Geometricus cannot fairly be called deadly. They will put a serious hurt on you if they bite you (a feeling like all the muscles in your body cramping violently) but almost never do they kill an adult (barring some other infirmity or allergy). Homer’s dog bees are much more likely to draw x’s on a persons eyes (mostly through allergic reaction as well). Spiders are beneficial creatures. Ticks however are evil. And sheep keds. Biodiversity be damned, they should all die. Just an opinion.

 
 

almost lost a finger a few years ago from a recluse bite but i still tell anyone who’ll listen that “spiders are our friends”
oh, and wasps too.
and yeah, people look at me like i’m nuts.

 
 

and PLEASE never mention jonah’s butt again. i can really do without that image.

 
 

I had all the experience with creepy crawlies I ever needed in the far east in 1970. Nope, they might be your friends, but they sure as hell ain’t mine. I’m a big fan of CBW in the form of various types of aerosol toxins sold under the brand name “Raid”. These days, I live INdoors, and if they wanna come in they’re gonna come under fire.

mikey

 
 

I have a pet tarantula. He is sooo awesome. He sits around all day and eats crickets. Probably the coolest pet ever, because I he doesn’t seem to poop and there are no leash laws in DC concerning 5 inch diameter spiders. Does anyone else know how arachnids poop? Don’t all animals need to expell waste somehow?

I never hear any grunting coming from his terrarium, so maybe he is a shy pooper.

 
 

I saw a spider poop once; it was moving along the wall and shot out a little butt droplet, which left a tiny dark brown circle on the wall.

 
 

If I am going to wish for a Spider bite, I would have to go with a Brown recluse, with sufficient necrosis to require amputation, on one of the following body parts:

Rush Limbaugh’s tongue

Jeff Goldstein’s cock (so he stops slapping people with it)

or Ann Coulter’s adam’s apple

Of course, I am very, very mean-spirited. And some of my best friends are spiders.

I have to hand it to you; if you want to convert me to a pro-spider stance, that’s the kind of rhetoric to use. For now, I’ll agree that if spiders did those things, I’d be friends with said spiders.

 
 

My comments were not really aimed at you so much as at some of the commenters (jrm78, Annie Laurie) who seemed to be confusing the two spiders. While the bite of the Brown Widow is not a pleasant experience, its effects tend to be less permanent than the Recluse, and therefore it is considerably less mean-spirited to wish one of them on Jonah’s posterior.

General, do you work in this field? I only ask because a good friend of mine is an expert in this area as well (at UC Riverside), and I get the feeling that there aren’t a lot of Brown Recluse experts across the country.

 
 

Eh, if he did get bitten, he’d probably use it as a new excuse to not enlist to help fight the war he helped create.

 
 

you live in mississippi?

 
 

Chuckles,
Note tigrismus’ comment. If you ever get the wed building spider on your ceiling and leave it there, as long as it feeds it will produce a nice little fecal-splattergram on your wall. Tempting as it is, do not try to deciepher the coded splattergram. Therein lies madness.

 
 

dammit…”decipher”.

 
 

Somebody’s gotta do it….

One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I for one welcome our new insect overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.

Good night, and good luck.

 
 

I don’t wanna sound like an idiot or nuthin’, but I think invasive species kick ass!

Just make sure we don’t call them “alien species” around him.

 
 

My comments were not really aimed at you so much as at some of the commenters (jrm78, Annie Laurie) who seemed to be confusing the two spiders. While the bite of the Brown Widow is not a pleasant experience, its effects tend to be less permanent than the Recluse, and therefore it is considerably less mean-spirited to wish one of them on Jonah’s posterior.

General Woundwort, I know that the Brown Recluse and the Brown Widow are very different species. I just don’t care which one of them bites Jonah on his pantload, as long as it’s painful and (further) disfiguring. And I agree, spiders are my friends — but the relative paucity of poisonous spiders is one reason I chose to live in New England . One consolation of a hard winter is that it kills the blasted ticks, whom I think of as tiny reincarnated Repubs, and the mosquitos, who are more like wingtard media spokespersons (whining, unfocused, & yet relentless in their assaults).

Dammit, will none of you young intertoobz wizards give me my “Jonah and the Spiders” game?

 
 

Oh, great. My area is full of brown recluses and black widows already, not to mention the coming fire ants and the dogs with the killer bees in their mouths who when they bark shoot bees at you.

Things like this? They make me to laugh.

 
 

OK, although this was somewhat handled above, it’s time for another…
Pedantic Minute!

Above, several people refer to spiders as “insects.” They aren’t, of course. They’re arachnids. 6 legs = insect, 8 legs = arachnid. More legs can be any number of other things. Your safest bet in referring to these exoskeletal creepy-crawlies is to go with the term that applies to all of ’em (plus, crustaceans in the water): arthropods.
This has been another Pedantic Minute.

 
 

I heard once that you’re never more than 6 feet away from a spider.
I think it was my grandma who told me that. Then she turned out
the light and closed my bedroom door.

 
 

I was bitten by a brown recluse here in Michigan, and now have the size of a quarter of a scar on my ankle. I am stating this simply because I am almost positive that because of the global warming they are indeed moving further North greater then anyone realizes. Recently my mother was also bitten by a brown recluse but the doctor could not commit but he said that it looked to be by a recluse. He also said a patient of his was bitten in early fall, and brought the brown recluse in to the docor’s office as proof. I have heard of several Michigan brown recluse stories in Michigan, especially recently in 2006. I am pleased to share this information to warn others of these deadly creatures.

 
 

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