Fever, numbness, shallow breathing, coma, death

[quincunx]

The worst thing about living in California is finding black widow spiders in my apartment.

Comments

[epouvante]

omg i would climb on a chair and not stop crying. are you walking around with a can of raid now?

[quincunx]

Nah. I just killed it and went to bed. This is like the fourth time this has happened, so I'm pretty blase about it at this point.

[avoidantcool]

Can you send it to me? One of my friends has a new spider collection he's trying to get up and going...

[jrwolf]

Only youuuuuu

[avoidantcool]

:)

[quincunx]

Its mangled body is stuck to the bottom of one of my shoes, sorry. Also, they are reclusive as fuck, so I can't imagine how you'd capture one without squashing it.

[funkyzanzara]

I still don't even know what they look like. I'm going to fucking dieeeee.

[quincunx]

Now with bonus brown recluse action!

[funkyzanzara]

LOOK I DON'T GET DOWN ON MY HANDS AND FUCKING KNEES WHEN I SEE A GODDAMN SPIDER AND GO "HMMM, DOES IT HAVE A TINY RED DOT ON ITS BACK" OKAY? GOD I HATE YOU FOREVER.

[quincunx]

Something tells me you will now~! ♥ ♥ ♥

[superblynothing]

Is this seriously a California specific thing? Please say yes before I start freaking the fuck out over here in Brooklyn.

[quincunx]

Don't think there are Black Widows in Brooklyn; if I recall correctly they don't get further north than Pennsylvania on the east coast. There are probably Brown Recluses, but you don't have to worry about those unless you live in a a basement/garage type area. Also, their bites aren't deadly in the same way that Black Widows' are, so even if you do encounter one and you do get bitten, you'd have plenty of time to realize that you had to go to the doctor (and after the wound sclerosed and began oozing puss, you would probably realize it was a serious problem!).

[branza]

the wound description is disgusting. thanks, aaron. i apparently don't deal with enough gross stuff at work.

fun story:
the first time one of the dog breeders started being our client, she came in with a huge bag full of poo and was like "i heard you test these things, right?!" at which point my boss got a look on her face like "WHAT THE FUCK GET OUT OF MY BUILDING"

the reason is because she knows neither jess nor i will ever test any poo for her ever. so if she took it on as a sample, it would be on her hands. maybe literally. bwahaha.

no spiders were seen or hurt in that story.

[ellelelle]

What! Don't those things live in countries far away?

I guess you live in a country far away.. but I wouldn't have predicted those things in california. yikes.

[quincunx]

They're kind of everywhere, and it gets worse as you go further south. San Diego is lousy with them.