4 ms·

I live in Kansas, and hate spiders in general. However, I am not particularly afraid of the rather common brown recluse. What scares me are the black widows (qu

• JKCalhoun 9y ago
  Grew up in Kansas, live in California now. I suppose I am cautious of both. I'll tell you, I was freaked out at how many Black Widows I saw when I came out here. I now more or less expect any pile of wood, any bucket on its side, any low deck to have Black Widows under/in it (and I'm generally right).
• jeffwass 9y ago
  My uncle was a doctor in Kansas City at a pediatric hospital. He was a toxicologist, and specialist in brown recluse spider bites. The author of this piece and my uncle most likely knew each other well, it seems they've published papers quoting each other and some pop news stories about brown recluse spiders mention both of them. Brown recluse bites are definitely thing, and particularly dangerous for small kids. Not super common, but he threat is real. One article says he used to see about a dozen bites a year, which increased in recent years to about two dozen. Just because Rick Vetter wrote this article specifically about not finding them in Cali, it doesn't mean they're something to be ignored where they're more prevalent, ie the Midwest.