Just a little warning

[Dawn]

Friends of ours returned recently from 3 weeks in a Florida villa. Mrs was telling me last week that her sister had to spend the night in the emergency room.

She was bitten on the shoulder by a spider. She didn't think anything of it at first as it was inside the villa and she thought that the bad spiders were all outside. Several hours later she felt very unwell. Turns out it was a Brown Recluse.

Just a little warning - indoors doesn't mean safe.

[Tink]

A brown recluse? Not good. Not good at all. She can end up with serious complications.

Also, a spider doesn't have to be "poisonous" to cause trouble. All spiders carry bacteria and if you are bitten you can expect at least a painful reaction from same.

Indoors does NOT mean safe by any means. Snakes get indoors too.

Boy, you must all think I'm totally phobic! No, but I sure am alert to things that can cause problems. Spiders are silent and if you don't look for them, you can easily be surprised by them. No real way to be positive they are not in the house other than keeping areas clean of course, and not having "nesting" areas, but that's so subjective you can make yourself crazy with that too!

Also, another little known reality is that those nasty roaches (even the big ones people call palmetto bugs-roaches by any other name) can and do bite.

[Dawn]

Yep whenever we are in Florida shoes get shaken before being put on, and bedcovers pulled right back before getting in.

Luckily she's ok and the insurance covered the medical expenses but it does remind us not to be complacent.

[Britchick]

brown recluse complications can be horrendous, yikes.

[Tink]

Yes, they can. A woman I once worked with had her 13 year old daughter taken to the Miami hospital as a result of a brown recluse bite. The child almost lost her leg. She didn't but has really, really bad scars from tissue death. The child was in hospital for almost six weeks.

[Britchick]

when we first moved to SC i checked everything religiously but after a while i stopped. After an encounter with a spider the size of a tea plate in Daniel's room that wouldn't die after a whole can of black widow spray was sprayed on it we decided to have the house fumigated every few months

[Johnie]

Black widows are a poisonous spider. And I imagine the spray is used to kill them or keep them away.

We've had a lot of rain this summer. We went down to the beach for a weekend. It was a highly recommended and historic hotel. Ok well the ac did not work and they rigged something up that I have dubbed "redneck air conditioning" lol. But the straw that broke the camels back were the 3 ginormous water bugs ( roaches really) that were in our room in the 6th floor. Oh ick. We left at 11:30pm and I quietly but firmly told the front desk why I was going and got a refund for that night. But she blamed all the rain. I understand that. But again. Ick!

[Britchick]

IT was an aerosol that we inherited from our predecessors! It killed most things on contact but not this one! Dan still remembers the night!

[Shellyamc]

We do have those up in this neck of the woods and they are a nasty spider indeed

It is such a freak thing that you don't think about it much, but then when you do think about it you can't stop

[Watchinherskip]

Black widows are a poisonous spider. And I imagine the spray is used to kill them or keep them away.

We've had a lot of rain this summer. We went down to the beach for a weekend. It was a highly recommended and historic hotel. Ok well the ac did not work and they rigged something up that I have dubbed "redneck air conditioning" lol. But the straw that broke the camels back were the 3 ginormous water bugs ( roaches really) that were in our room in the 6th floor. Oh ick. We left at 11:30pm and I quietly but firmly told the front desk why I was going and got a refund for that night. But she blamed all the rain. I understand that. But again. Ick!

ohhhh was that the Cavalier? Yikes!!!