Bug-A-Salt! We have one in the office.
Haha, why am I even remotely surprised!?
Tom - Yes you are correct, we do have some very dangerous spiders......You guys up there have some pretty interesting predator spiders that would easily match ours!...
For example, your Brown Recluse spider (she's a cutie too) can do interesting things to human flesh (necrosis)...
...and your black widow spider (she's an elegant lady indeed) is a very dangerous local species in your country...
Don
Black Widows are beautiful! Our water meter access box (2X3 foot hole in the ground by the street - ~100 yards from the house) is full of hundreds, and they would make fine jewlery. They don't even look real. I'll try to find a pic.
Most spiders are beneficial as you all probably know. We have many 3" "Garden Spiders" with yellow stripes that build webs in unbelieveable places - like they're trying to snag a person.
I have first-hand experience with a brown recluse bite. I suspect it was living in my pants i keep in the garage for yard-mowing/weed eating (to keep the ticks and chiggers out of the house). Evidently I sat on it and soon had the characteristic pain & redness. I was an EMT and nursing student at the time and went to the doc. He declared it to be an infection of some sort and prescribed antibiotics. At the end of the week's course of antibiotics, I called and told the "nurse" it seemed worse and I had a fever and pain. and she said "Oh, it's just cell-u-LAHT-iss" (cellulitis). I said it wanted to continue the antibiotics and see doc ASAP; of course this was a Thursday before a holiday weekend. She refused to renew the Rx and would not have the doc call me back. Four days later they opened & I drove myself to Nashville and literally forced my way into the doc's office (a BIG MD's group with 4 receptionists and 10+ docs - takes up almost a whole floor of the med center), and dropped trou. He told me to come with him and told the phone girl to call dr so&so and say he was bringing a "red" patient. A couple doors down was a surgeon's office; we walked past the full waiting room and into a treatment room. My bite had become necrotic and infected and stopping the antibiotic caused a rebound effect - it had became much worse.
The surgeon drained and packed it and I have never had so much pain (made a kidney stone feel like a bee sting). I was left with a divot in my glute with a 1cm opening and about 2" X 3" wide. Dr. Assshole would not Rx anything stronger than Hydrocodone 5/500, and I was supposed to "wet-pack" the wound
daily (remove the gauze and replace it with fresh saline-moistened gauze). As soon as I started the first time I collapsed in pain; my wife tried and I actually blacked out. Begged doc for topical anesthetic or something injectable to numb the area but no; let alone narcotics besides the weak hydros.
I had a generous trusting friend at the time in the medical profession with unlimited access to all drugs. He couldn't believe I was taking 10 X 60mg codeine 2x a day (but I was and then some) combined with several other opiods and potentiators known to science. It still REALLY hurt. As well as packing this new unwanted hole in my ass with cocaine-soaked gauze to do the dressing changes. Even then it was excruciating. It took a full 25' jar of 1/2" gauze to pack it. The cocaine didn't really work but there was some -caine that worked better. I will testify that pharmaceutical cocaine is a whole 'nother drug than the illicit stuff - my God, I see why Coca-cola took the nation by storm!
Eventually (like a year later) it healed completely but i had a new problem...
I should have sued but went to rehab instead (got a little too used to the high-dose opiods). I thought I could self-regulate the meds, but that didn't work out too well. Common problem for healthcare workers with access to that stuff. All better now (15 years plus), with a new respect for pain complaints, especially those that raise the pt's pulse to ~180 and their temp to 102+. And a new hatred for nurses who think they run the show, and docs who think every pain pt is a "pill-seeker".
