This happened several years ago.
After showering, I slid on my underwear, a pair plucked from the laundered mound on my bedroom floor. What I did not know then was a spider had already placed dibs on that very same pair. Before the elastic band snapped around my waist, I was bitten on the butt.
The pinch of its pincer-like mouthpart on my lower left cheek was barely a pinprick. Still, the underwear dropped to my ankles faster than you can say Peter Parker. Below, the spider scrambled around inside my Ivy Crews in a stunned-like state. This carnivore in my cotton briefs had bitten more than it could chew.
As spiders go, there was nothing impressive about it. It was small; two could fit on a dime. Still, finding a spider, no matter how small, in my underwear did create concern. It was my first spider bite, after all.
I had no idea what kind it was. I did know, however, two things: it was brown; there was only one, a loner, a recluse. Conclusion: I had been chomped by a brown recluse spider.
In Indiana, a brown recluse is our tarantula, our black widow. Heck, our great white shark for that matter. We are nothing more than spider chum, friends and neighbors. They’re in our shoes; they climb up our bed skirts; they drop on us from low-hanging tree limbs and dusty ceiling fans; they’re inside our gardening gloves and baseball mitts. Sleep well, kiddies.
I stayed still so as not to scare the spider. I needed to somehow capture it – live, I presumed – and present it to a healthcare professional for identification. Or, if overcome by venom before leaving the house, at least the coroner would find my cold corpse clutching a jarred spider and easily determine the cause of my demise.
Moving from bedroom to kitchen without startling the spider was tricky and slow going, especially with underwear stretched between my ankles like prison shackles. In the kitchen, I trapped the spider with a paper towel and released it into a jar. Then I transferred it to my daughter’s special see-through bug container, which was equipped with a magnifying glass lid for better viewing.
In the bathroom, I inspected my wound, a near impossible task without aid of a hand-held mirror due to the unfortunate placement of the bite. I had to contort into an awkward, naked position to aim the mirror behind me and then twist my neck nearly 180 degrees for a proper visual inspection. It was a position I hope to never repeat, a view I hope to never revisit.
The mirror’s glass reflected a tiny red spot on my butt. It looked harmless enough. Instead of rushing to the emergency room, I decided to go to work. Happy to be alive, I vowed to be a more productive employee.
The first thing I did at work was search “brown recluse spider bites” on Yahoo – so much for being a productive employee. Some bite sites actually had WARNING labels due to their photos’ intense graphic nature. The wounds depicted were ghastly; volcanic lesions; chunks of flesh eaten away as if by tiger bite; wounds that would’ve made Mother Teresa turn away in terror and consider a new calling.
According to the sites, possible reactions before the whole flesh-eating thing took effect included restlessness (check), itching (well, now that you mention it), fever (I started to perspire), and vomiting (probably due to viewing the photos). A common, frightening word from the sites haunted me: necrosis.
I told my buddy in the next office about my spider bite in case I collapsed, speechless and frothy, in a corporate corridor. He promised to keep it confidential and not tell our coworkers. I foolishly believed him. Then I resumed my spider bite research, revisiting those gruesome Internet photos that seemed more appropriate for a Web site dedicated to dynamite juggling mishaps.
Word of my imminent demise spread. Concerned – ha! – coworkers stuck their heads in my office, lending moral support. “Have you started shooting webs out of your palms?” one said. Another asked, “Do you have a sudden urge to eat flies?” Someone expected to see me hanging upside-down from the ceiling. I was called “Spider Can.” I was caught in the dreaded web of workplace humor that made me the butt of too many jokes. This was a time of necrosis, not laughter.
It was all too much. I rushed home, retrieved the spider and visited my doctor’s office. People in the waiting room looked warily at the bug bucket dangling from a yellow strap at my side. When the woman behind the registration desk looked down into the jar, she quickly straightened, apparently startled by the contents. I should have warned her about the magnified lid, I guess. Through it, the spider took on mutant-size proportions. For added fun, I considered saying, “I passed this earlier. Should I worry?” Instead, I said, “It might be a brown recluse. It bit me on the butt.”
The other staff members stepped aside as she carried the bucket away. She soon returned. No one present knew much about spider identification. I couldn’t help but notice how no one was concerned enough about my health to suggest examining my butt bite. I was sent to the county health department, then to the county extension office where Jim Peter immersed my specimen into a small vial filled with alcohol to preserve it. The spider died instantly. “At least you brought him in alive,” Jim said. “Sometimes by the time people bring them in, they’re dead and dried out, and crumbs fall from their boxes into my hands. That makes it much harder to identify the insect.”
Jim said my spider had the right coloring but it was too young and undeveloped for him to determine if it had the brown recluse’s trademark violin-shaped marking near its head. “Since it’s possibly health related, if I was you, I’d send it Purdue for verification,” he said. “It’ll only cost you $11. We’ll pay the postage.”
Not a bad price for peace of mind over a missing piece of butt flesh.
Since it was Friday, he said I wouldn’t get the lab results until early the following week. Jim assured me I would know fairly soon if it was a serious bite since necrosis starts quickly. There was that word again! I worried away the weekend and became more efficient with the proper positioning of a hand-held mirror aimed at my posterior. Luckily, the red spot never grew. I was not rotting.
Purdue University’s Plant and Pet Diagnostic Laboratory results arrived in the mail, stating in part, “The sample submitted was identified as a sac spider. These spiders probably account for more human bites than any other spider.”
A wimpy sac spider was all it was. Still, news of the harmless sac spider was the best $11 I’d ever spent. I resumed a normal life, though the spider incident did change my shower routine. Now, before putting on my underwear after drying off, I stomp on my undies a few times and then hold them upside-down to shake out whatever’s inside. You never know what might be taking residence in there. You never know when you might become breakfast.
Contact: scottsaalman@gmail.com
Hilarious!