There are a lot of spiders in the world. There are more spiders than people. But there is only one species of humans compared to about 48,243 spider species, so the spiders might have an unfair advantage when it comes to world domination. In addition, spiders have eight legs and most have six or eight eyes. Most people have no more than two of each. Spiders can generate silk, but people just generate hot air. You might ask, if spiders are so great, why haven't they taken over the world? Maybe they have and we just don't realize it yet. Spiders have a pair of fangs that inject poison into insects or whatever it is that they eat. Most spider fangs are too small to penetrate human skin. Most spiders capable of biting humans don't have the right kind of venom or enough of it to do much damage. But there are a couple of spiders around here that occasionally harm people: the black widow and the brown recluse spider. The brown recluse spiders, Loxosceles reclusa are also called fiddlebacks. Black widows are a little uncommon. I have seen a few in the garage, but not many and never inside the house. Here's one. PICT8342a.jpg It lived in the garage for a few weeks, until my wife moved it outside when it generated an egg sac. Brown recluse spiders, on the other hand, seem to be everywhere. However, their geographic range is limited to about 15 states. Oklahoma is one of the most popular states for these spiders. fiddlebackrange.jpg Brown recluse spiders are, as the name suggests, very reclusive and far from aggressive. Most bites occur when the spider is inadvertently trapped against the skin. When a brown recluse spider bites a person, it usually doesn't hurt much. Maybe it doesn't inject much venom, maybe its fangs are too short to inject the venom into the skin, or maybe the person isn't affected much by the venom for one reason or another. Whatever the reason, most bites of a brown recluse are ignored. P1100268b.jpg When there is a bad reaction to a brown recluse bite, it doesn't occur until a few hours after the bite. Occasionally it really hurts, and makes a nice spot with blue and red rings. Rarely, it causes a necrotic wound, a sore where the skin tissue dies, and may take several weeks to heal. In very rare cases, the necrotic wound can be several inches in diameter. While very rare, there are people in Pryor who have experienced this. (There are also people from Pryor who have been struck by lightning.) There is not much in the way of treatment available for brown recluse bites other than normal first-aid: keep the wound clean, etc. The bite of a brown recluse spider is typically self-limited and self-healing, without long-term consequences. Even the severe cases of necrosis are rarely life-threatening. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra041184 It is not uncommon for wounds to be misdiagnosed as brown recluse bites. From the New England Journal of Medicine article: "A wide array of infectious and noninfectious conditions are frequently misdiagnosed as the bites of brown recluse spiders, including staphylococcal or streptococcal infection, herpes simplex, herpes zoster, diabetic ulcer, fungal infection, pyoderma gangrenosum, lymphomatoid papulosis, chemical burn, toxicodendron dermatitis, squamous-cell carcinoma, neoplasia, localized vasculitis, syphilis, the Stevens-Johnson syndrome, toxic epidermal necrolysis, erythema nodosum, erythema multiforme, gonococcemia, purpura fulminans, factitious injury, sporotrichosis, and Lyme disease." The trend of misdiagnosis is especially evident outside the range of the brown recluse spider. This can be important. For example, if you have an infection that requires antibiotics, you may not get them if it's diagnosed as a brown recluse bite. https://spiders.ucr.edu/myth.html Enough of the technical stuff. What do these spiders look like, where are they, and how do you get rid of them? Brown recluse spiders have six eyes arranged in three pairs. You can see them clearly in this young brown recluse I discovered having a meal on our kitchen counter. P1130097a.jpg The legs are uniformly colored and covered with fine hairs. The legs have no stripes, banding, or spines, and the abdomen is also uniformly colored. P1100246a.jpg I mentioned above, these things seem to be everywhere. In Pryor, every house I've lived in, every office I've worked in, and even every airplane hangar I've used has had plenty of brown recluse spiders. But that's not unusual, and it's not such a big deal. There are several cases where researchers went into a house and identified dozens or hundreds of brown recluse spiders, when the occupants had never knowingly been bitten. The spiders are reclusive, remember. Even so, I'll stomp one whenever I get the chance. After I take a picture. Brown recluse spiders will hide in dark corners, in clutter and clothing on the floor, in and under boxes, even inside walls, under floors, and in attics. P1340841a.jpg They are capable of living for months without food or water in out-of-the-way places. Because of this, "bug bombs" don't work well against them. Professional pest control will reduce brown recluse populations, but even that doesn't eliminate them all, much of the time. P1390698a.jpg There are some things that will help control brown recluse populations in a house. First, reduce their habitat. Clear out the clutter, especially cardboard boxes, or at least get it off the floor. Second, use "sticky traps", the cardboard sticky things that trap bugs and occasionally a mouse or a snake. These serve two functions. First, they kill some brown recluse spiders (along with some "good" spiders). Second, if you see a bunch of fiddlebacks in a trap, you'll have a good idea where in the house they're living and can take appropriate action with an exterminator or flamethrower. Third, don't kill the wolf spiders. They kill brown recluse spiders. Fourth, an unimportant side note: Spiders have muscles that retract their legs, but none that extend the legs. Their legs are extended using hydraulic pressure. Yesterday I looked a couple of sticky traps in our house. One had a wolf spider and several other bugs. The other had three brown recluse spiders and nothing else. That one was next to some cardboard boxes on the floor. PD000393.jpg PD000398.jpg Incidentally, I took all the photos on this page at or not far from my house in Pryor. Homework: https://entomology.ca.uky.edu/ef631