Here’s a little secret about spiders: MOST of them are actually pretty friendly. They’re generally harmless and they’re good for the ecosystem.
But there are exceptions.
There are a few poisonous spiders in Southern Georgia and Northern Florida. Black widows and brown recluses are all creeping around these parts, and if you get bitten by one, you may need to get medical treatment.
Let’s go over a few commonly found spiders in our area — and whether you should beware or be nice. We’ll start with the ones to be on guard for.
Brown recluse
As their name suggests, brown recluses like to hide. They like dry, dark places. They hide in wood piles, in crawl spaces, under clothes piles, in shoes. But they don’t like to come in contact with humans. In 2001, pest control specialists removed more than 2,000 brown recluse spiders from an occupied home in Kansas. None of the four people in the home was bitten!
You can recognize a brown recluse by its violin-shaped body and its legs: Although most spiders have eight legs, these spiders have six legs. There are a lot of brown recluse lookalikes, so counting legs might help you identify the spider in question.
And although it’s uncommon, a brown recluse bite can be an emergency, so call your doctor if you suspect you’ve been bitten.
The widows
Georgia is home to two native species of poisonous widow spiders: the southern black widow and northern black widow. These spiders’ venom can be as potent as the venom of rattlesnakes. According to Savannah Now, black widows can be found “under logs, stones, cardboard, forgotten lawn mowers, the covers of water meters, essentially anything one can turn over.”
Bites are rare but can send you to the ER in extreme cases with symptoms of severe and intense pain, stiffness, muscle and abdominal cramps, excessive sweating and hypertension.
All the rest
Georgia alone is home to more than 500 species of spider. And some of them are really neat. Yellow garden spiders, orb weavers and lynx spiders are colorful and known for elaborate webs. Other spiders, like wolf spiders, daddy longlegs spiders, and house spiders, are commonly found around homes, especially in fall and winter when the cold drives them inside.
Although most spiders are harmless, they’re also fuel for nightmares and heebie jeebies. If you’re seeing a lot of spiders in your home, it’s a good idea to recruit the services of pest control experts. Because spiders eat other bugs, seeing a lot of them might suggest a bigger infestation of something else. Call Dixon Pest Services today to find out how you can live spider-free. Let them do their thing for the ecosystem outside the home.