That map is false. We absolutely, positively, veritably, have them in PA now.

We've got them in northern NY, I know two people who've been bitten.

have them here, too, which does not show on the map. badmap! bad!

I haven't seen a spider since my last post...but I think about the zombie skin from Brown Recluse bites...nasty...

They shoveled steroids down my throat when I was bitten. I had seven little ragged rotten holes surrounded by 'zombie skin', but, nothing like the great chasms of rotting flesh you hear about with some of the recluse horror stories. Definitely had the red, white, blue effect; redness around the general bite area, white, flaky dying skin directly around a blue/black hole of rotting flesh at the bite itself.

Agreed. And we've had them for some time. I have two friends who had brown recluse bites (one in South Philly, one in Havertown), both of whom ended up needing to have the wounds debrieded multiple times to try to outrace the necrotization from the bites.

It's never a Brown Recluse...

You swallowed it in your sleep.

Spiders live OUTDOORS. Anything in the house that's not paying rent gets killed or thrown out. (good policy generally, and applies to lazy-ass boyfriends as well)

We have had about 10 or more in the last week. They are huge, quarter dollar sized.( probably only quarter sized) Day before last one crawled into my sons shirt while he was sitting at the PC. He crushed it before it bit, so the next day I went to get some spider traps. The woman at the hardware store asked me if I really want to kill them. wtf! No, lady, I am not talking about a little itsy bitsy spiders. sheesh!

The traps are still left unopened. If I had a spider crawl up my shirt I would have all four traps around my perimeter.


basically what I told the lady at the hardware store

Are there really more spiders in Autumn?
I remember asking this before (probably not here) and being told - no, they just come inside with the colder weather. Rubbish, sez I. Walking to school and round to Grandad's, I am seeing webs everywhere I look.

But then - is it a quality of the light that makes the webs more visible?
What is a spider's mating cycle?
I could look it up. But I'm not Spiderwoman. Someone else do it for me.

Mating cycle?

I tried that once, watch out for the handlebars - and the phrase 'Ring my bell' just doesn't mean the same to me any more.

I don't mind a spider in the house, but more than one can turn into many, and there can definitely be too many spiders in a house.