This is usually fleas, ticks, bedbugs or mosquito’s. People can and do have allergic reactions to all of these bugs. If you mess with a bite it will become infected.. use common sense and don’t touch or scratch at it. If your house is overrun with spiders then you need to clean your house. Seriously, spiders cannot live without a food source. A spiders food source is bugs so if you have a ton of spiders that means you have a ton of bugs! This is frequently seen in older houses that are not sealed up tight or homes where people are messy and do not vacuum and store food properly. Spiders are actually the least of your worries. They are very beneficial to the ecosystem and they help rid us from the bad bugs. Become informed and don’t fall for the myths!

To those who think they were bit while sleeping, that was either a bed, bat, or swift bug (bed bugs parasite humans, bat and swifts parasitism those animals respectively, by will feed on nearby humans.) Those bugs often feed at multiple sites, leaving a string of welts across a persons body.

Where I live in Maryland, there are only two species that pose a threat to humans – the brown recluse (a rather slight, unassuming looking spider), and the black widow. Based on a description of the incident and viewing the wound, it is fairly easy to determine if someone was bitten by one. But every ER doctor seems to make the common mistake of calling two welts separated by about a centimeter, a spider bite – something that annoys me to no-end!

Other than that- I once woke up in the middle of the night to a stinging sensation on my face (between my left cheekbone and eye)… It was a spider that decided to make a nest inside my old bed’s cubbyhole (part of headboard design) and came out for a snack while I was sleeping.

Wolf spider bites that I’ve gotten in my sleep are mainly dry bites that don’t turn red or itch. I’ll feel pain in the area and then see the fang marks which turns into pretty heavy pain and a nice bruise after a day or so. The dry ones hurt a lot more than the others. The most painful one was a night where I was bitten twice by a large spider/s on the shoulder. It felt like an adrenaline shot which is what I would imagine getting stabbed with an icepick would feel like. The best part is that it felt that way continuously for a week. The smaller spiders that bite me for ‘family’ buffet night don’t seem to have the control with the venom that the larger ones do. I have a smaller bite that is almost healed on my achilles tendon was definitely loaded. It was red and itchy and wasn’t looking good until I put some honey on it with a bandaid. The smallest one on the back of my hand actually rotted off a few layers of skin and looks as though I was burned with a hot iron. I used honey on all insect/spider bites. It does work. The dry one on my elbow feels as though I was struck by a hammer very hard. The one on the same arm in the forearm area feels like somebody “frogged” me with their knuckle extended several times. I’ve recently started sleeping under a insect net that I have wrapped around my mattress that does the trick assuming that you don’t roll up next to the edge where they can get to you. Considering the fang marks being 1/4″ apart, these are some BIG spiders. I killed one the other day that was running down my living room wall at 3:20am. It took about a pint or more of poison to drop the little sweet heart. I may have just drowned him. I have that little rascal in a jar soaking in alcohol.

The pest control guy told me it was a wolf spider and congratulations on killing one of the most beneficial spiders out there. These spiders are extremely fast. If I don’t sleep protected under my net, I get a minimum of two large bites a night along with a smaller one. If I roll up against the edge where my arm is pressed against the net, I get bitten like last night. They must really like the taste of my blood, but I’m quite tired of them. I’ll be getting some traps to kill as many as possible before I move from ‘spiderland’.