Our Pet the Black Widow Spider

I was a paramedic for twenty years. Only the female black widows are particularly venomous (kind of like humans that way); although the male black widow has a venom sack, they are tiny compared to the females and not especially harmful. Contrary to what most people think though, the bite of a black widow is unlikely to kill anyone who isn't very young, very old, or already sick. It is best to seek medical attention but they are not as dangerous as their reputation suggests. Of all spiders in North America, they are the most likely to cause loss of life, however.

The brown recluse, as its name suggests, is not particularly aggressive. When someone is bitten by a brown recluse, it is usually reacting in self defense to someone rolling over on it or putting their hand, arm, leg or another exposed part of the boy on it, such as children playing under a bed or behind a couch. The brown recluse is more likely than the black widow to share a habitat with people. However, the bite of a brown recluse spider is unlikely to be fatal but it will make you miserable for a long time. Again, as with the black widow, the very young, the very old, and the very sick are the most likely to have a fatal result from it, but less likely with the brown recluse than with the black widow. The bite of a brown recluse causes an ulcer that can take months to heal, will likely leave a scar, and may require surgery.

There are no recorded cases, by the way, of anyone ever dying because of a tarantula bite. Although they are venomous, their venom is very unlikely to be dangerous to humans, the larger danger being from infection caused by the bite. There are more dangerous spiders in South America that are related to tarantulas, but they are not actually tarantulas. By the way, tarantulas in Australia, Asia and Europe are more likely to attack and have a more potent venom than those in the Americas, but still unlikely to kill anyone. Their bite is more comparable to a wasp sting.

Not a spider, but while I'm on the subject of things that people are particularly afraid of, the only scorpion native to the United States that has the likely potential to kill a human being is the Arizona Barking Scorpion , found in Arizona and parts of Texas. Like the bite of a black widow, only the very young, very old, or very ill are likely to die from the sting of a scorpion. Of the more than a thousand species of scorpions on the planet, all are venomous but only about 25 have venom likely to kill a human being. I've been stung by a scorpion though, and it does hurt.

Many years ago, when I was eighteen and living in Southern California, I was renting a house with a friend of mine. We found a female black widow in the cabinet under the bathroom sink. Rather than killing it, we just made a point of looking for it before we did anything in the bathroom. It never seemed to leave the cabinet, so that was fine with us. At least, it was fine with us until one day it hatched hundreds of baby black widows. That was the day we quit pretending to be Buddhist. We took the mom and as many of the babies as we could get to crawl onto a newspaper and evicted them. We went back for as many of the babies as we could get, and then sprayed for the rest of them. Sharing a bathroom only goes so far.