ID brown recluse and what to do

[NYAN]

Obviously we are dealing with psychotic serial predators here:
"Vetter and his colleagues studied six years of brown recluse bite records, derived from three poison control centers in Florida. A total of 844 brown recluse bites were reported. But in 100 years of arachnological data, only 70 recluse spiders (not all of them brown recluses) have been found in the entire state."

The statistic from California is better. Currently I’m talking to a medical professional who believes their patient was bitten in California by one.

 

[Bookgirl32]

Lucky exterminator if he's having you spray your house for a single spider. This is the most overblown reaction to a spider I have seen. Can't relate to having a kid but how many million people live in areas inhabited by brown recluse and you could probably count the number of yearly bites on a hand or two. That makes the chances of your child getting bit way less than 1% so I think you should just relax and save some money. On the extremely off-chance that you are the unluckiest person on earth and get bitten by an unprovoked brown recluse, a bite would be very manageable and nowhere near life threatening. Is that worth paying someone to spray your house with chemicals that could do damage to your kid?

Oh I totally agree I’m way too scared I just wish I could get my brain to calm down about it. The first mistake I made was looking up whatever popped up online instead of trying to find a reliable source. It’s not a rational reaction at all and I know that, which is why I came here. Hoping to get some common sense slapped into me. Still sucks though.

 

[NYAN]

Oh I totally agree I’m way too scared I just wish I could get my brain to calm down about it. The first mistake I made was looking up whatever popped up online instead of trying to find a reliable source. It’s not a rational reaction at all and I know that, which is why I came here. Hoping to get some common sense slapped into me. Still sucks though.

Consider keeping one as a pet, or any spider. Just because they have medically significant venom doesn’t mean they act much differently than other spiders. Observing them and caring for them will help you understand how little of a threat spiders pose to humans. Heck, maybe you’ll find a new facination or hobby.

 

[Hardus nameous]

Every house I've lived in in Kansas has had them; but they really aren't a problem. However I did notice a huge decrease in their numbers after releasing jumping spiders in and around the house a few years ago.

 

[Bookgirl32]

Every house I've lived in in Kansas has had them; but they really aren't a problem. However I did notice a huge decrease in their numbers after releasing jumping spiders in and around the house a few years ago.

I’m not against releasing other spiders in order to kill recluses. I wouldn’t have the slightest clue how to go about doing that though? Thanks all of you for being understanding. I know this is either your career or sincere interest and I don’t hate spiders. I just really struggle with anxiety over these kinds of things and the more I hear about people who live with them as a normal part of life the better I feel.

 

[dangerforceidle]

Have a read through this: https://scienceblog.com/488/family-lives-with-2000-plus-brown-recluse-spiders-without-bites/

Definitely an extreme example, but it shows how unlikely a bite is. Especially if you take precautions like outlined in the link posted by myself and NYAN.

 

[Hardus nameous]

As I was out and about I would just catch any jumping spiders I came across, bring them home and release them. Empty pop and water bottles or even food containers made handy catch cups; ventilation wasn't an issue as they would only be in the container for a few minutes.

 

[pannaking22]

I’m not against releasing other spiders in order to kill recluses. I wouldn’t have the slightest clue how to go about doing that though? Thanks all of you for being understanding. I know this is either your career or sincere interest and I don’t hate spiders. I just really struggle with anxiety over these kinds of things and the more I hear about people who live with them as a normal part of life the better I feel.

Major major props to you for coming to this site to ask questions and get more info instead of just believing what the internetz has to offer. As posted above, anything with Rick Vetter attached to it is going to be high quality, he spent his whole career studying spiders in an urban setting and how much of a "pest" they really were.

Do you have a basement or garage? If so, I'd recommend grabbing some of the cellar spiders (I think some people call them grand daddy long legs in the Plains States/Upper Midwest) and conveniently relocate them to corners/closets throughout your home. A building I used to work in in central Illinois had a recluse problem and they sprayed and did sticky traps, which helped with the population, but I introduced cellar spiders (family is Pholcidae) all around the rooms I worked in and rarely saw a living recluse after that. Frequently saw them strung up in the pholcid web or the shriveled corpse on the ground below, so those guys were pretty efficient predators. Even lifting boxes and things that commonly held recluses before yielded almost nothing. They work as other general pest control too. Basically if it's smallish and crawling/flying around, there's a good chance a pholcid will grab it eventually.

 

[NYAN]

If you can’t find cellar spiders, someone on here sells them. You’ll have to pay for shipping too though..

 

[pannaking22]

Shoot, if people down here weren't so gung-ho about spraying for everything with more than 4 legs I'd be happy to send you a box of them. I have yet to find a good spot with a lot of pholcids though.

 

[Bookgirl32]

If you can’t find cellar spiders, someone on here sells them. You’ll have to pay for shipping too though..

I’ll try to find some around my house. I do have some sticky traps up now so I guess I’m going to trap the food spiders with the bad? I did have a good exeterminator come out yesterday. He did an inspection and said while he can’t say I don’t have anymore brown recluses he doesn’t think I have infestation level issues, af least not yet. He offered to spray but said he thought I should do sticky traps and watch the situation first. He also said that he thought the color of the recluse that I found was really really dark for what he has seen in Nebraska. He said the ones he deals with in this area are usually a lighter tan color and he had never seen one that dark. He wondered if the spider hadn’t hitchhiked back with us from Indiana a few weeks ago. He went all over the house for an hour looking and found two dead spiders he thought were suspicious along with a lot of other dead spiders who were not recluses. He couldn’t tell from these two though bc one was a molt on a mouse sticky trap in the garage (I’ll include a pic) so there was no body but he said the legs and the color were much more like what you see in NE. And then one more in the basement storage room that he couldn’t tell. Anyway, he said he had no interest in getting my money and that he doesn’t guarantee spraying for spiders anyway bc it doesn’t always work. He said it would help dry up their food source but that’s all he could guarantee. He did, of course, totally freak me out though by saying he would be scared if he found one in his house. But maybe he was trying to be empathetic, who knows.

 

[pannaking22]

I’ll try to find some around my house. I do have some sticky traps up now so I guess I’m going to trap the food spiders with the bad? I did have a good exeterminator come out yesterday. He did an inspection and said while he can’t say I don’t have anymore brown recluses he doesn’t think I have infestation level issues, af least not yet. He offered to spray but said he thought I should do sticky traps and watch the situation first. He also said that he thought the color of the recluse that I found was really really dark for what he has seen in Nebraska. He said the ones he deals with in this area are usually a lighter tan color and he had never seen one that dark. He wondered if the spider hadn’t hitchhiked back with us from Indiana a few weeks ago. He went all over the house for an hour looking and found two dead spiders he thought were suspicious along with a lot of other dead spiders who were not recluses. He couldn’t tell from these two though bc one was a molt on a mouse sticky trap in the garage (I’ll include a pic) so there was no body but he said the legs and the color were much more like what you see in NE. And then one more in the basement storage room that he couldn’t tell. Anyway, he said he had no interest in getting my money and that he doesn’t guarantee spraying for spiders anyway bc it doesn’t always work. He said it would help dry up their food source but that’s all he could guarantee. He did, of course, totally freak me out though by saying he would be scared if he found one in his house. But maybe he was trying to be empathetic, who knows.

Eh, coloration can be pretty variable in these guys, even in a single population. I found a few dozen in a shed in southern Illinois that ran the color board from light tan with almost no markings up to a beautiful dark brown with an almost black fiddle.

If you release a bunch of cellar spiders, give them a couple days to settle in, then set out the sticky traps. That'll help minimize the number that get caught on the traps because they'll have set up their webs somewhere. Some will still get caught as they wander (mainly mature males), but the rest should be in good shape.

I know a lot of people would rather spray for them, but there's something funny about trying to solve a spider problem with more spiders lol.

 

[Bookgirl32]

Found this, feel like I can see the fiddle shape and not sure if it’s a molted skin or a dead spider? Probably just looking for things now.

 

[dangerforceidle]

Found this, feel like I can see the fiddle shape and not sure if it’s a molted skin or a dead spider? Probably just looking for things now.

Plausible brown recluse. Looks like a dead spider, since the prosoma is intact.

 

[Galapoheros]

I found this in my closet a month or two ago. I've lived here 22 years, I saw some them the first year I moved in, never had a problem with getting bitten but I do check my clothes sometimes. And I also don't let my bed covers touch the ground, I'm scared of everything else that has gotten loose crawling on my bed too. I've got recluse and kukulcania in my house, I don't worry much about it. If you want to kill them when you see them with something that's not that toxic, Windex works.

 

[Bookgirl32]

I found this in my closet a month or two ago. I've lived here 22 years, I saw some them the first year I moved in, never had a problem with getting bitten but I do check my clothes sometimes. And I also don't let my bed covers touch the ground, I'm scared of everything else that has gotten loose crawling on my bed too. I've got recluse and kukulcania in my house, I don't worry much about it. If you want to kill them when you see them with something that's not that toxic, Windex works.

Good to know you’ve been there that long and never had a bite! I’ve found two of these on my traps, they are super tiny. Are they baby recluse or a different kind of spider? Now I’m just kind of interested.

 

[Bookgirl32]

The other one

 

[dangerforceidle]

Both of those actually look like young woodlouse hunters, Dysdera crocata. Eye arrangement, leg proportions, and chelicerae shape seem to match. They don't look like young brown recluses to me.

 

[Bookgirl32]

Both of those actually look like young woodlouse hunters, Dysdera crocata. Eye arrangement, leg proportions, and chelicerae shape seem to match. They don't look like young brown recluses to me.

I looked that up and checked storage room traps and had one adult woodlouse spider down there. Can they kill recluses though? I don’t want to catch the ones that can kill recluses I want those alive and all over my house lol.

 

[NYAN]

I looked that up and checked storage room traps and had one adult woodlouse spider down there. Can they kill recluses though? I don’t want to catch the ones that can kill recluses I want those alive and all over my house lol.

Anything with venom can kill a recluse in theory. I suppose if they wanted to they could for sure. If I were you, I would take the traps down if you don’t find any recluses in them after a 2 or so months. Be sure to check them regularly. The thing I hate about those traps is that they aren’t indiscriminate in what they catch. Some posted a picture of one and there were whip scorpions and geckos stuck to it all skinny and shriveled up.