In article , Dave Fouchey
wrote:

Paghat, I wouldn't be quite so sanguine about no lethal or dangerous
spiders. Look up the Hobo Spider....and say hello to your neighbor!

Cheers!

Dave Fouchey

We called them funnel spiders as kids. I still catch hobos to feed the
salamanders with some regularity. They're easy to tease out of their
funnels, & they make a pleasant mouthful for a pet herp. I used to catch
them bare-handed & never got bit, but in my old age I'm warier & catch
them with a paper cup & plop them in the collecting jar. The females
usually eat their partners after mating so if you find them in their
funnel, there will usually be a male husk & one big fat fat happy female
-- & the females aren't particularly "toxic" if they do bite. If you find
one far from a funnel, it's probably a male, & worth looking in the
vicinity for the funnel to catch the female while collecting.

I've read that they bite without provocation, but I've grabbed them & held
them between two fingernails expecting that if they did bite they'd only
nibble a nail, & tossed them quickly into a jar. I really believe they
tend not to bite unless squeezed or pressed, like if rolled over on in a
sleeping bag, but obviously some care has to be taken. I never felt that I
was taking chances snatching them -- it's just not possible to catch 'em
alive with gloves on -- & I caught them bare-fingered for twenty years,
before I lost my nerve & started using a paper cup. I've also lost my
nerve about changing lanes rapidly on the freeway, bruisingly rough sex, &
tasting stuff that smells bad -- so it isn't the spider, it's just me
becoming older & more chicken.

Even if bitten by the more potent male, the chances of death are close to
zero percent. Mostly they're only an issue around here because some (dumb)
people worry they're brown recluses (which are never encountered here).
And also because they can get quite big so are scary.

I sleep on a futon on the floor. Perhaps once every two or three years a
large house spider runs across my face & I just about shit the sheets.
These might or might not be hobos, there is more than one largish spider
of that sort that commonly enter houses, all make the same funnels, & all
the males hunt far from any funnel. I wouldn't be able to tell one from
another, though only one species is even associated with necrotic skin
injury. I know people who've been bitten in their bedsheets by these
fellows & had quite a nasty blackened wound from it, but never went to a
doctor (though it's recommended) & never suffered any lasting dire
consequences.

I'm sure someone somewhere had an allergic reaction & dropped dead, but I
never heard of it, & would not regard the hobo as an extremely dangerous
spider. Some people apparently can have a slow-healing skin lesion (if a
male spider bit them really excellently & if the person was particularly
susceptible). As the worst one can encounter on Puget Sound, I think my
commentary stands -- nice to be somewhere where one in a million spider
bites are nothing to worry about. There are more than occasional
discoveries of the black widow in western washington too, but too rare to
fret over.

Pollinating honey bees are much more dangerous if number of necessitated
hospitalizations & near brushes with death & actual deaths are the
measure. I'm not scared of bees either. But if I lived in Australia where
the spiders & the snakes aren't as gentle & as close-to-harmless as the
ones in my Puget Sound garden, I think I'd worry a bit.

Where the Rocky Mountain Fever Tick lives, though, that really bothers me
on hikes. You might never even know you were bitten by an infected tick
until your whole body erupts in hairy moles, supposing you don't just drop
dead first. Creepy-ass critters.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/