Don't spay insecticides in your waders! Like jay said, just turn 'em inside out...
Don't spay insecticides in your waders! Like jay said, just turn 'em inside out...
Thanks one and all for all the advice. I'll be checking before every wader insertion in the future for sure. Just remembered that I was wearing a pair of shorts because of the hot weather that day so them "no-seeums" had a clear field on which to munch. Turning waders inside out will be the rule of the day now. Luckily my new waders are bootless or that would have been a problem. Whatever chomped on me maybe it was fatal for them and I've been revenged! :)
With Brown Recluse significant tissue damage is very much the case. Hospitalization is probably not uncommon but not required in every case. My brother in law was bitten in his bed several years ago, he started sweating got out of bed and laid on a couch, so he wouldn't disturb his wife and not realizing it was a brown recluse that bit him. He said he thought he was having a heart attack. He went to work at Baptist Hospital in Memphis the next morning and a doctor but him in a hyperbaric chamber. Without prompt medical attention the tissue with rot away. Growing up in the rural south on a small hill farm and having used outhouses many time, I have been somewhat amazed there were not common occurrences of farmers and their family being bitten on they backside. But, maybe there are some places a brown recluse will not go.
Very VERY few "Spider Bites" are really spider bites. Although in your instance, it could well have been. There are several species which are capable of biting, and they all do it defensively--- not like many insects which bite to feed on blood. SO, spider in your waders assumes it is being attacked by weird pressure and being trapped between your leg and the fabric, so it bites... Thankfully not a widow or recluse. Could also have been a small wasp, ants, or any number of other things.
I got bit by one of those cute little black/gray and white jumping spiders which we always see on walls and rocks... there was one on our window curtains at home... I thought I'd just grab it and put it outside- wrong. I grabbed it and got a powerful bite right between my thumb and index finger! Felt like a wasp sting. the pain only lasted a few minutes, but it was memorable.
SLIGHTLY GORY DESCRITION -- FEEL FREE TO SKIP
My first spider bite came in college when a spider dropped off a classroom ceiling and bit me on the back of my neck. The spider was a smallish, brown, and very hairy. It was clearly not a recluse. It took its body to the school infirmary when I went. The bite hurt like fire and the site quickly was very quickly swollen. The school doctor gave me a tetanus shot and warned me that a whole host of secondary infections can result from the bites of even "harmless" spiders. Spider are cold blooded and their fangs can host a plethora of microbes which pose no threat to the spiders themselves. The deep injection of pathogens caused by those fangs can lead to all sorts of medical unpleasantness. When the brown recluse got me a few years ago, as I lay dosing in my recliner, I ended up with a MRSA infection as well. The bite area ran profusely for two weeks unless my leg was kept elevated. This even after the envenomed tissue had been cut out. I lost about a cubic inch of soft tissue and the big lump of scar which filled in the hole still bothers me from time to time. I heartily recommend care if brown recluses etc... are likely to be around.
If any medico wishes to weigh in with a better educated opinion, please feel free.
Regards,
Ed
Brown Recluse bites are bad bad bad juju. Bad.