As a Pittsburgher, I don't have much occasion to worry about natural enemies. Unlike our friends in the South, we don't have to fret overmuch about poisonous snakes because you'd be lucky to find a timber rattler around here if you wanted to see one. Go west & you'll find folks who pack heat on their morning jog lest they run into a grizzly or mountain lion. The southwest has scorpions & other painful, bitey arachnids to keep you on your toes.
Around here, the only thing there is to really scare ya is the black widow but in 32 years of total arachnophobia, I've yet to encounter one. Besides, they're venom is only deadly to the infirm & small children.
On Wednesday evening, my fiancee came home from work complaining that something had bitten him & he was itching it like crazy. By 8:30 AM, he was having trouble breathing & had hives on his entire body, even on his eyelids, so he went to the ER.
They think he was bitten by a black widow spider!
Some of his symptoms were the same as a heart attack: chest pain, trouble breathing, cold sweat & dizziness. But some of them were also similar to appendicitis: vomiting, severe abdominal cramps, elevated white blood count. They told him that the hives were the only clue that it was something else.
It's kind of scary because you just don't worry about black widows, but they are here. He wasn't in an outhouse or woodpile lately or any other place where you might worry about encountering one. And if the ER staff figured it out so fast, that must mean that it's fairly common in this area because doctors aren't going to go after the most improbable cause when treating a patient.
I've always believed that one should know the enemy, so I thought I knew a lot about spiders but I was totally wrong. I'd like to think that it happened to him at work but just to be safe, I am bug-bombing the entire house tonight!
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