I HATE walking through spiders web on the way to deer stand in pre-dawn night. Then worried have spider on ya if feel something on back of neck, while trying to be still…
Been bitten twice by black widows. The major pain only lasted about an hour both times. It was pretty intense, felt like someone held my finger over a Bic lighter.
But you don’t get the nausea like a scorpion bite, and the effects seems to be shorter lived than a rattlesnake. The scorpion bite lasted most of an afternoon, and the rattlesnake bite was real bad all day.
Shit, son, if it weren’t for bad luck you wouldn’t have any luck at all.
You’re like some kind of freaky venom magnet.
Holy crap SS. What are you doing that you’re getting bit by all that crap? Stop hanging out under porches. 
Sent via Tapatalk
I grew up on a cattle ranch in West Texas. It was part of the job description, I guess.
The pain tolerance did come in handy later on in life. I dated a redhead in college. 
We have similar (probably the same) spiders that will spin webs between the cotton/corn/soybeans on the edge of a field all the way to the tree line, 15-30 feet away. I’ll the riding an ATV around the edge of the field at night and suddenly feel web in a place that I shouldn’t be feeling a web.
And don’t get me started on the golden silk orb weavers on the wooded trails… :suicide2:
And where, pray tell, did she bite ya?
That’ll do it…
Having seen first hand what a brown recluse can do to flesh, I’m much more afraid of them than pretty much any other spider. The fact that they’re reclusive does nothing for me…it just means I’m likely to find one in my damn bedding.
Doesn’t stop me from doing an awesome man dance upon walking through a web of a “harmless” one though.
I’m good with snakes. We had some as pets growing up & where I live along this river, there’s tons of 'em.
My weakness, however, is centipedes. When I was a kid growing up, (briefly) my bed was pushed tight up against the wall. When I woke up one morning, my nose was about two inches from the wall. Right there, point blank in front of my eyes was this nasty behemoth of a centipede. I freaked. I was about 6 yrs old & I can still remember it plain as day. Here on out, I’m on a mission to eradicate those sombitches from this earth.
Sent via Tapatalk
Do it often enough you actually build immunities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Haast
As a result of handling these snakes, Haast had been bitten 172 times as of mid-2008, he lived to be 100 years old.
Soon after opening the Serpentarium Haast began experimenting with building up an acquired immunity to the venom of King, Indian and Cape cobras by injecting himself with gradually increasing quantities of venom he had extracted from his snakes, a practice called mithridatism.
In 1954 Haast was bitten by a common, or blue, krait. At first he believed his immunization to cobra venom would protect him from the krait venom, and continued with his regular activities for several hours. However, the venom eventually did affect him, and he was taken to a hospital where it took him several days to recover. A krait anti-venom was shipped from India, but when it arrived after a 48-hour flight, he refused to accept it.
He received his first cobra bite less than a year after he started his immunization program. During the 1950s he was bitten by cobras about twenty times. His first King cobra bite was in 1962. Haast was also bitten by a green mamba. Many times Haast donated his blood to be used in treating snake-bite victims when a suitable anti-venom was not available. More than twenty of those individuals recovered.
Good to know, but I think I’ll hold off making any more contributions to science. 
It is funny, in a way. I have had more than my share of time in hospitals and ER’s. Most of the doctors commented on the pain tolerance I had whilst I was there. Maybe the bites had something to do with it?
And that was before getting married…
If you took a hit from a rattlesnake and had only a bad day, then you are a badass. Copperheads ruin a day or two; rattlesnakes and moccasins can leave a mark.
Never been tagged by a black widow, and I hope I never am. I got a nasty brown recluse bite while on a field exercise in Ft. Campbell and had no idea until a day later. The bite it’s self was painless, but the treatment certainly was not.
Indeed, and I was lucky. The snake was a banded rock rattler, and it was middle of the summer. I was told by the doctor that a third of all bites never get venom, a third get some, and the remaining third get a “good” dose. I got enough that I have a divot in my left leg. I was nine, and only got nailed with one bite.
The local ER doc told my grandparents that he thought I did not get much venom when I was bit. Personally, I felt I got more than enough. I spent a day in the local hospital, and then went home the next morning.
The other bites just got ice and a warning to be more careful, as there were chores to do.
Sort of off topic, but there’s a pseudo vaccination that my bird dog gets which increases the period of time you have to get to a vet for anti-venom before permanent damage starts.
Aware of anything similar for humans? Where we hunt it’s a real concern, though unlike a dog I don’t get interested upon hearing a rattle and seeing a slithery bastard with fangs.
Their prevalence combined with the fact that several of our locations are several hours away from any medical care driving 80 or 90, I’ve often wondered if I could purchase a vial or two of the anti-venom to keep in a cooler for week long trips.
Not aware of anything like that in humans. We have CroFab as the only commercially available pit viper antivenom, although word is that may soon change with a challenger coming to market. However, I’m not aware of a pre-exposure prophylaxis in humans.
Serious, I’m not as familiar with that particular rattlesnake that you tussled with, but you are correct that some snake bites are dry in that little or no venom is injected. In the US, coral snakes probably have the highest percentage of dry bites; rattlesnakes have the lowest (~20%). Either way, you are fortunate that a small scar was your only token of rememberance.
Thank you, Doctor, I am a fortunate man in more ways than I can count. I do mean that.
And good heavens, people - SteyrAUG has alligators in Florida! To heck with snakes, those things give me the heebiest of jeebies.
Reno 911 Miami rushes into my mind every time I even hear something about gators…
Off topic but we’ve got alligators here in TX too you know. 
Come down and go fishing with me and I’ll run the boat up into Alligator lake(in the National Wildlife Refuge) north of Christmas Bay and you can catch redfish and reel them in past two creepy eyes staring at you twenty yards away. Almost to where you could touch them with the push pole.
Honestly, it’s a standing offer and a hell of a lot of fun even if we don’t go looking for a gator.
And man do we have some stories.
I grew up in a neighborhood completely surrounded by canals. That means several people had a canal in their backyard which was convenient of you had a boat of some kind.
But if you were intelligent, you knew better to leave your dog in the back yard, let alone chained up. But not everyone was intelligent. I still remember some old woman screaming because a six to seven foot gator came out of the water…watched her chained up poodle bark at it for several minutes and then nonchalantly walked up and grabbed the poodle and dragged it back into the water.
I was probably only 12 but I remember thinking "What kind of dumbass chains their dog in the back yard on a canal KNOWN to be inhabited by gators?
The other amazing story is every year there would be hatchlings. These baby gators could usually be found nesting under the two land bridge that spanned the canal and was the sole entrance / exit to our neighborhood. So every year neighborhood kids would try and catch a “baby gator” as a new pet.
I remember kids in their early teens wading waist deep into the canals trying to snag one blissfully unaware of the fact the “Mom” was probably not too far away. I’m still amazed that there were never any incidents.
Every now and then when we’d stop our bikes on the bridge on the way to the mall we’d see a pair of eyes and a snout cruising down the waterway. And on rare occasions you might even see a few up on the canal bank.
Back to snakes we used to regularly catch them. Down here they have a water bandit which looks remarkably similar to a water moccasin. And you had to be really sure what you were dealing with before you picked it up. But as I mentioned earlier we had lots of dumbass kids. The usual technique was to pin down the head with a stick and pick it up right behind the head and determine what you had. This way if you had something bad, you could still safely get rid of it.
Water bandits (not surprisingly) were usually found on or near canal banks. Well I remember one particular dumbass kid (we seemed to have quite a few of those in my neighborhood) saw something skim into the water and screamed “WATER BANDIT” and went swimming after it. Came ashore holding it and we promptly determined he had just grabbed a 5 foot water moccasin.
My only encounter with something truly dangerous was the time I flipped over a 4 foot by 4 foot piece of plywood (favorite snake shelter) and found several coral snakes. After mentally verifying “red touch yellow” was the “bad kind” I backed off and left them alone. They aren’t particularly aggressive and can’t unhinge their jaw to strike a flat surface like most snakes can but they are related to a cobra and extremely toxic when it comes to venom.
cane spiders !
hated those about 4-5 inches or so and insane fast I mean like blink and its across the room ! like it cant be real how fast they run !
also had these strange crab looking spiders that would make wicked nests ! all over the front of your house
then of course we had happy spiders to make up for it
