Brown Recluse Spider Western Washington

Cal I Baetis · Jun 18, 2023

Tacoma man faces amputation after mysterious spider bite

Jesse Elting spent nearly two weeks in the hospital after getting bitten by a venomous spider.

www.kiro7.com

Anyone have experience with these?

jact55 · Jun 18, 2023

Damn, that spider whooped him. How do you get bit so many times, smash the damn thing.

When living in Texas my dad got bit on 2 occasions on his calf. Huge nasty open wounds. Like it ate away at his flesh.
I was a young kid, but think they were brown recluse.

FishyJere · Jun 18, 2023

They are quite real and nasty. Wear gloves when sticking your hands into places that have not been disturbed in some time. They are hidey spiders.

Wetswinger · Jun 18, 2023

I was on a service call to a church in So. Tacoma and the maintenance man was on a crutch with one leg dragging. He was moving an old scrap wood pile and the spider got up his leg and bit. He showed me his wound and its as if half his calf was missing. Just a withered mess and discolored flesh all around it. Really felt bad for him, as he said it was the most traumatic experience in his life...He claimed it was a Recluse...

singlehandjay · Jun 18, 2023

The trick is going to the doctor when you think you got bit by one, not a couple days later when your skin is falling apart at the bite site. They are bad ones, my friend Dan got bitten by one on his back beside his spine and the next on his face. The spine one almost turned into a really bad deal. It ate the skin and flesh and had to have skin removal next to his spine with skin graft to fix the hole.

Paige · Jun 18, 2023

F@#$%ing spiders, damn!

jaredoconnor · Jun 18, 2023

I still have no idea what things to be wary of, in this country. I don’t even know what poison ivy looks like. Anything less obvious that a bear, cougar or crackhead, and I’m in trouble.

SurfnFish · Jun 18, 2023

Cal I Baetis said:
Tacoma man faces amputation after mysterious spider bite

Jesse Elting spent nearly two weeks in the hospital after getting bitten by a venomous spider.

www.kiro7.com

Anyone have experience with these?

bit in the ass while asleep, in the morning found a crushed brown recluse under me, ended up in the ER later that morning with rapidly swelling bite area, fever and engaged lymph nodes. Put on antibiotics, ended up with a necrotic hole the size of a quarter where the venom had destroyed the surrounding tissue. Throw in encounters with hella large spiders in Central America and Australia and the running joke in the family is Dad's got a spider phobia...no shit

doublespey · Jun 18, 2023

We had a post back in Oct 2022 about these. Some folks were saying that they're not around W Washington. Guess there are more than a few. I didn't get bit (fortunately), but found one on the kitchen floor in Lynnwood on a cold morning about 2004. It was sluggish and I caught it in a glass bottle and looked it up on to see what kinda spider it was (it was large). Definitely a Brown Recluse - one big fat spider that I didn't want in my house.