Johanne's Journal, 12 November 2011

That is awesome, Bonnie...and I am also glad that you have managed to rid yourself of your recluse infestation!!! Have a great Sunday! Love ya...lots of hugs...hope things are better for you! 

Love you too, Stef. Are you feeling better? I'm on a more even keel. Now if I can just work out my food issues, I'll be all right. The sun helps, and I got a standing lamp with an extra reading arm so that the living room is brighter. I don't know if I hate winter or just the dark. Sending hugs back to you! 

Congrats on touching that tarantula..You are much, much braver than I.. I am just getting to where I can swat any with a swatter...and I use hairspray on them too...So glad you got rid of the ones in your home... Have a terrific Sunday..Love and Hugs....♥♥ 

Never - in a million years! :) Much Love. 

I am not scared of spiders.....but I could not do that no way no how, you are one brave lady.......I think it's the dark that makes winter bad. I love the light and the sun......happy Sunday...... 

Hey Bren, if you'd told me a year ago I could do that, I would have called you a liar. LOL! I used to have to be rescued from pin-head sized spiders way up in a corner of the ceiling. Having to deal with so many of them, and poisonous ones at that, over the summer must have cured me. I'm not saying I want any crawling on me, but they no longer cause heart attack symptoms when one runs out of hiding. You have a great one too. Love you! 

J, I used to say the same thing. I've been terrified of spiders since I was around 9 yrs old. That's when I stopped jumping in leaf piles for fear there might be spiders in them. Love back atcha! 

Yvonne, I've always been terrified of spiders, but also always found them fascinating. Isn't that weird? It IS the dark that effects me so. It gets worse every year. This year turning off daylight savings time just happened to coincide with the first raw, wet days we'd had. It was like a double wammy. I got a floor lamp that takes 150w bulbs and it has an extra arm that swings over me when I'm reading and doing handwork. It seems to be helping, somewhat. You have a happy one too. 

I LOVE tarantulas, seriously if I didn't live with an arachnophobe I would have one.. possibly more. I am glad you got your infestation under control, and that you have over come some of your fears of spiders - they really are not that horrible. 

WOW! 

Ekkkkkk!!!!! They make me weak kneed!! lol You are much braver than I!!! My best friends sister and husband have nearly 10 of them and I hate them all. So much, I avoid coming over if at all possible. LOL  

Lauren, as I said, I find spiders, in general, fascinating. They also scare the " " out of me. Apparently, I'm not as bad as I was. I once said you couldn't pay me a million dollars to touch one. I'm glad it's under control too. I was afraid to move anything or pick anything up. The recluse were everywhere. I didn't see one other type of spider or insect in the house since spring (including in the sticky traps which have 12-20 recluse in each). Last week I saw a cricket and a medium sized wolf spider, so things are definitely on the mend. 

That's what I said, Me. Wow! 

Shae, that's the one pet my children could NEVER have. I can't even imagine having one, let alone 10. What on earth do you feed them if they are captive? 

Yeah not a big fan of recluse spiders.. can't lie about that but I do find them very beautiful mysterious creatures. You actually feed them live crickets and things like that -the crickets I used to feed my toads (before they all died) were horrible, they would freak me right out so I opted to feed them 60 cent gold fish instead lol 

Lauren, do you have recluse spiders up there? For some reason, I thought they didn't live that far north. I spent all of my younger years dreading recluse spiders and checking my shoes every single time I put them on because my 9th grade biology teacher, Mr. Brett, told us they were worse than black widows and they liked the toes of shoes. What I DIDN'T know until this year when I was fighting the infestation was, they don't live in Maryland/D.C./Northern Virginia where I lived most of my life. LOL! Crickets, huh? I used to grow those in damp egg crates for my amphibian terrariums when the kids were little. That's too much work, even if I were brave enough to have a tarantula . . . which I'm NOT. LOL! But I TOUCHED one. :-) Hehe. 

Joanne, I live in VA and the Brown Recluse spiders are here, too (according to the clinic I go to). How did you get rid of them? Where do you find the traps? Mine are all outside ... thank goodness. I am not sure I know what one looks like but I am outdoors all summer and have had to go to the doctor a couple of times for what appeared to be spider bites that were very infected. 

Hi Mom. According to Wikipedia, the brown recluse is limited to the lower Midwest, south to the gulf coast. (I couldn't get this to load the link for it. I'm going to put this in another journal so I can make you a link.) There are not supposed to be any recluse on the East coast. I get infections from regular spider bites, even blood poisoning a couple of times. I'm not sure why. Once you've seen a recluse you will never forget what one looks like. Recluse always look like they're standing at attention. They have small bodies with long, jointed legs. The abdomen ranges from cream to almost black with no markings. They have 3 sets of two eyes. That is their main distinction, since other spiders that may resemble them have eight eyes in four sets of two. When you've lived with as many as I have this year, you can tell one a mile away just by the way they stand. They are very non-aggressive and shy and the only reason people get bitten is they brush up against them. I had, literally, hundreds of them in the house and I only got bitten once, when I picked up a hand towel without shaking it first. She had climbed into its folds while it was laying there. I took the spider with me when I went to the emergency room for identification. They gave me a strong antibiotic and antibiotic creme. I had almost no reaction other than itching. I've had much worse reactions to regular spiders. The sticky traps are made to catch everything from bugs and spiders to mice. You find them with the insecticides at the grocery store. They're flat when you buy them and you fold them into little, open-ended boxes and put them all around the baseboards of your house. The recluse, liking tight hiding places, walk right in. My traps are full of every size from pin-head sized babies to some really big ones (big as recluse go . . . they're not a really large spider like the wolves that you DO have in Virginia.) The only good thing I can say is, there is not another bug or type of spider in any of the traps. The recluse saw to that. LOL!