Nature Notes: Georgica in the Crosshairs

Pamela Rosenthal, who lives in the hills southwest of Three Mile Harbor, called the other day. She found a spider living on a toy that was left in the yard for some time. She was concerned that it might be a black widow, as it was black. She said it had two red spots on the back, but it didn’t have the telltale red “hourglass.”

I asked her if it was shiny black, and she replied that it was.

“Black widow,” I answered.

For some reason, black widows are becoming more and more common locally. I spent an entire childhood on the North Fork of Long Island looking for such a spider, but I was never able to turn one up. In fact, I didn’t hear of a black widow spider on Long Island until someone brought me one from the Northwest section of East Hampton five years ago.

This year a landscaper brought me an adult female black widow in all her glossy finery, complete with red abdominal spots, but she was not alone. She had her newly hatched family with her, scores of tiny spiderlings, not at all black and less than a millimeter big. This was the latest of about three black widow reports this summer and six or seven sightings in East Hampton since 2001.

Instances of another poisonous spider, the brown recluse, are becoming more and more common as well. Both of these are more apt to be found in southern climes and rarely in temperate New York State. One wonders if we are just more numerous and more careful observers these days, or is the number of what used to be newsworthy rarities actually increasing?

When one considers these two spiders together with chiggers, Lone Star ticks, and some other more southern arthropod species, as well as southern birds that have come to become resident breeders with us in the past half century, one might speculate that their increasing numbers here have something to do with increasing average temperatures and, perhaps, milder winters.

We know that the southern birds flew here, but wingless arthropods don’t fly, and it would take a spider or tick literally a hundred years to walk from Georgia to New England. Notwithstanding their extra pair of legs — they have four pairs, insects have three pairs — it is obvious that they didn’t get here by perambulation. And does this mean that it won’t be long before someone brings me a fire ant to identify? Let’s pray not.

The most oft-suggested mode of travel here is by way of garden plants imported from southern or even tropical nurseries. Literally millions of plants are imported into the New York area each year, and it’s a good bet that some of them are carrying a black widow, brown recluse, or some other noxious arthropod species.

If this were so, however, one would expect to find that most southern arthropod sightings here would be from places where these imported cultivars were being planted, not in remote parts of East Hampton such as Northwest, the Montauk moorlands, or Gardiner’s Island.

While we ponder the arrival of fire ants on imported plants and killer bees by air, we should note that the two spiders alluded to above are poisonous and can cause serious illness. May Berenbaum in her book “Bugs in the System” points out that 63 deaths during a pre-2000 10-year accounting period in the United States were attributed to black widow bites, while two resulted from brown recluse bites.

You are much more liable to die from a bee, wasp, or hornet sting; they account for about 50 percent of the annual deaths in America caused by the bite or sting of a poisonous animal. Snakes account for another 30 percent, scorpions only 2 percent. No one has yet to bring me a scorpion.

There is not one record of a verifiable black widow bite on eastern Long Island that I could turn up, but there are several records of brown recluse bites. While there are antivenins in production for both black widow and brown recluse bites, they would be hard to come by on Long Island. (Can you imagine how difficult it is to milk the poison from these two spiders and how many of each species you would have to keep on your spider farm in order to get even a thimbleful of the stuff?)

The complications caused by the spider bite are in most cases worse than the poison injected. Secondary infection from bacteria (carried on the spider’s mouth parts?) in the bite area is the most troublesome affliction to deal with. It can last for weeks, even months, and is difficult to arrest.

There are numerous home remedies that have been applied to spider bites. Rubbing alcohol, Adolph’s meat tenderizer, and witch hazel, for example, have all been used with some measure of success. While we should be careful in resorting to such decoctions and treatments, we have to remember that many of them date back to ancient times, when there were no doctors, but only lay practitioners and medicine men.

They have since been handed down from generation to generation and, while not at all preferable to what modern medicine has to offer, some of them work. One of these that has been used successfully on at least two of those afflicted is the application of a poultice of puréed raw potatoes directly to the bite.

A woman who used to work across the hall from my office was given this remedy by a friend shortly after she was bitten about 10 years ago; she tried it and it worked. My sister across the bay tried it on her spider bite a few years later and it also proved successful. It goes without saying that you should see a physician immediately if bitten by a poisonous arthropod or any other poisonous animal.

Where do these spiders hang out? A landscaper friend of mine who has since moved to Florida was bitten after taking a shower by a brown recluse that was hidden in his bath towel. Brown recluses are more apt to be found inside the house than black widows, and as the name suggests they tend to be hidden away from view, not at all exposed the way daddy longlegs spiders are so easily seen when in the house.

Look for the black widow in a dark damp area outside the house or in a damp spot in an unlighted basement. It would seem from the more and more frequent encounters recorded for these two spiders over recent years that they will only become more common, as will their bites.

One should avoid these spiders in the same way that one avoids bees or poison ivy. Thus, one should exercise caution in handling spiders and maintain the basement and yard area around the house in a sanitary, uncluttered condition.