# Snakes, spiders, scorpions......



## Woodchuck (Nov 1, 2012)

Getting out into the wild, I have always dreaded getting bitten by a venomous snake. 

Here in Arkansas we have cottonmouths, copperheads and rattlesnakes, so it is entirely possible. 

I have encountered all three, but always at a safe distance. 

when they were alive my mother and her sister seemed to always be running into LARGE rattlesnakes, having killed a 48, 51, and 56 inch specimen while berry picking.....

I have killed a couple of black widow spiders around the house, and was bitten by a brown recluse 5 years ago....I received hyperbaric chamber treatment for 17 days......A whole new definition of claustrophobia...

So far no scorpions in N.E. Arkansas...


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## Fozzy (Jul 20, 2013)

I was born in northern Arkansas and have heard many tales of "American Australia" where everything seems to want to kill you. Fortunately my parents got me out before I was eaten by anything.

I did go back as a teenager to visit some cousins. I remember going to a pond that was FILLED with cottonmouths. Spent half the afternoon shooting them from the bank to thin them out.


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## Woodchuck (Nov 1, 2012)

Fozzy said:


> I was born in northern Arkansas and have heard many tales of "American Australia" where everything seems to want to kill you. Fortunately my parents got me out before I was eaten by anything.
> 
> I did go back as a teenager to visit some cousins. I remember going to a pond that was FILLED with cottonmouths. Spent half the afternoon shooting them from the bank to thin them out.


I live a short distance from Shirey Bay and Rainey Brake...They have Huge water moccasins there....


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## Fozzy (Jul 20, 2013)

My ties are all in the Ozark area. It's really a whole different world out there.


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## As'laDain (Nov 27, 2011)

i grew up in the santafe swamp in florida. 

we had scorpions, black widows, brown recluses, cottonmouths, cane break(timber) and eastern diamond-back rattlers, copper heads, coral snakes, and pigmy rattlers. 

i have encountered all of them in the wild except for the copper head. i have been bitten by all the bugs, and a pigmy rattler and a coral snake. all of which wouldnt have happened had i not been messing with them...

fortunately for me i didnt have any bad reactions to any of the venoms. not everybody does. i almost got bit by a eastern diamond back though. that would have made for a very, very bad day...


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## thebirdman (Apr 5, 2014)

Another Arkansan here. Only place I have ever seen a live scorpion in the wild. I've probably seen three in all my time here. Oh, and don't forget the alligators....
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Fozzy (Jul 20, 2013)

thebirdman said:


> Another Arkansan here. Only place I have ever seen a live scorpion in the wild. I've probably seen three in all my time here. Oh, and don't forget the alligators....
> _Posted via Mobile Device_


And the panthers.

And the Boggy Creek Monster.


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## Mr. Nail (Apr 26, 2011)

So @Woodchuck, 
Are you going to come up north for a snow vacation this winter. All of them biting critters sleep it off up here. All you have to worry about is the weather killing you. 

We have timber rattlers up here and a cousin of the black widow that is very non-agressive. I didn't think we had scorpions until we built a building on the outskirts of town. The first year we found them in the morning. We really don't worry about the poisonous plants either. All we find is some stinging nettle.


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## GTdad (Aug 15, 2011)

Anybody else have boys who've held "gladiator" contests between Black Widows and scorpions? Seemed like the spiders always won. Seems fair. I've never been bit by a spider but scorpions have nailed me a dozen times or more. Little bastards.

My grandson was bit by a coral snake when he was two. That snake was apparently too pretty to leave alone. Poor little guy spent the next week in the hospital, but recovered fine. Quicker than my heart recovered, that's for sure.


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## Fozzy (Jul 20, 2013)

GTdad said:


> Anybody else have boys who've held "gladiator" contests between Black Widows and scorpions? Seemed like the spiders always won. Seems fair. I've never been bit by a spider but scorpions have nailed me a dozen times or more. Little bastards.
> 
> My grandson was bit by a coral snake when he was two. That snake was apparently too pretty to leave alone. Poor little guy spent the next week in the hospital, but recovered fine. Quicker than my heart recovered, that's for sure.


Never did the gladiator fighting, but I was always inventing new ways to piss off these huge harvester ants we had around our place. An M80 firecracker in the entrance usually did the trick nicely. Or put a ring of elmer's glue in a circle around it. 
I later found out that those particular ants are some of the most venomous of any insect in the world. They'd come boiling out of the ground like some biblical plague and make a bee-line right at me.

Good times.


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## As'laDain (Nov 27, 2011)

GTdad said:


> Anybody else have boys who've held "gladiator" contests between Black Widows and scorpions? Seemed like the spiders always won. Seems fair. I've never been bit by a spider but scorpions have nailed me a dozen times or more. Little bastards.
> 
> My grandson was bit by a coral snake when he was two. That snake was apparently too pretty to leave alone. Poor little guy spent the next week in the hospital, but recovered fine. Quicker than my heart recovered, that's for sure.


i used to catch wolf spiders and fight them. i had one champion spider that absolutely kicked a$$. it would pounce on anything i put in its cage, bite it, and roll over and throw it across the cage in one swift motion. 

i decided to feed a tiny scorpion to it one day. it pounced and fell over dead! apparently wolf spiders are no match for florida bark scorpions...


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## Fozzy (Jul 20, 2013)

I always wanted to catch a mantis for that kind of thing. My "nope" instinct was too strong.


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## GTdad (Aug 15, 2011)

Fozzy said:


> I always wanted to catch a mantis for that kind of thing. My "nope" instinct was too strong.


Although I WOULD be willing to drop a scorpion onto a fire ant nest to see how that works out.

It helps with the remorse thing when you hate all of the parties involved.


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## jorgegene (May 26, 2012)

i once slept on top of a picnic table which underneath had a number of black widow nests. i wasn't too worried because i put a tarp on the top
so they couldn't crawl up and get me at night.

once i went on a work trip in eastern colorado near the KS border. our stipend only allowed for a real
flea bag motel. my workmate buddy was checking everywhere for vermin, and found a brown recluse under the sink.
he told me better check my bedding, so did, i shook out my pillow case and out came a brown recluse.
his hobby is spider photography, so he recognized immediately what they were. had i not taken his advise, i would have been in that
hyberbaric chamber too............................or worse.

i used to camp out in the open on the ground in AZ and once found a crushed hairy scorpion in my sleeping bag. apparently, 
he crawled in with me at night to keep warm,
and i rolled over and crushed the poor guy.


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## Fozzy (Jul 20, 2013)

jorgegene said:


> i once slept on top of a picnic table which underneath had a number of black widow nests. i wasn't too worried because i put a tarp on the top
> so they couldn't crawl up and get me at night.
> 
> once i went on a work trip in eastern colorado near the KS border. our stipend only allowed for a real
> ...


Lucky. The scorpions I've run into have been armor plated. I tried to kill one in a friend's house once. Swatted it hard several times, and it gave me the finger. I ended up riverdancing on it while squealing like a girl just to make it die.


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## As'laDain (Nov 27, 2011)

my hobby growing up was catching everything i could that could kill me. 
except STDs...

i think your pretty lucky about the scorpion too. i used to get stung by them all the time in florida, and it was always when i rolled over on them in bed. i'm not sure which hole in the floor they would crawl through. they had plenty to choose from.

most people actually don't have the nasty necrotizing wounds from brown recluse bites. those who do, however, cant be helped by much. hence the hyperbaric chambers, which helps you heal faster.


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## As'laDain (Nov 27, 2011)

Fozzy said:


> I always wanted to catch a mantis for that kind of thing. My "nope" instinct was too strong.


i bred a couple once. kinda the same thing?
the female won.


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## Fozzy (Jul 20, 2013)

As'laDain said:


> i bred a couple once. kinda the same thing?
> the female won.


That's how it usually works for humans also.


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## jorgegene (May 26, 2012)

in college i took a class in medical entomology. doing some research i came across a paper that was written by some crazy MD doctor
in the '40's or 50's that wanted to study and take notes first hand on the effects of a black widow bite.

so he had a big mature black widow in a jar he kept for that purpose. he had to literally force the spider to bite him.
they are actually quite shy and not aggressive, but their venom is one of the most potent neuro-toxins known to man.

so this crazy doc put the spider between his fingers and forced it to bite him.
then he sat down to take notes. he started describing the excruciating pain in medical terms radiating through his nerves and eventually described it 
as one gigantic charlie horse throughout his entire body. the pain eventually was so severe he passed out and collapsed on the floor.

the fool was at his house, not at the lab, and no one was home. he was by himself, when he initiated this hair brained experiment.

lucky for him, his wife walked in the door from shopping and found him collapsed on the floor passed out and got him to ER or else he might have succumbed.

crazy sonna*****, although he did get his answer first hand, didn't he?


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## Woodchuck (Nov 1, 2012)

thebirdman said:


> Another Arkansan here. Only place I have ever seen a live scorpion in the wild. I've probably seen three in all my time here. Oh, and don't forget the alligators....
> _Posted via Mobile Device_


I lived down in Nashville Ar. for a couple of years. lots of wildlife, saw deer, gray foxes, coyotes, and ***** in the yard on almost a daily basis.....Killed a couple of copperheads in the back yard....The far end of our back yard was about 300 yards from the city reservoir
and gators were seem there...Also all the boat ramps had gator warnings....

I saw bob cats, and the only river otter I have ever seen down there...


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## Woodchuck (Nov 1, 2012)

most people actually don't have the nasty necrotizing wounds from brown recluse bites. those who do said:


> The recluse bite was weird. It started as a burning itchy bump on my right leg above my knee...
> 
> I noticed it one morning and decided it wasn't normal and kept an eye on it...
> 
> ...


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## As'laDain (Nov 27, 2011)

you know whats funny is that the way you described it was exactly my same experiences with MRSA. 

except that medical personnel assumed it was MRSA from the start because there had been a lot of cases since everyone came back from Haiti. they gave me an insane ****tail of IV and oral drugs, surgery on the site, and packed it full of a couple kinds of silver salts. i had to flush it out and repack it several times a day. they never gave me novocaine for it... military doctors...

it started out as a itchy bump on my right cheek, just below the corner of my mouth, kinda like someone pricked me with a needle that had been dipped in something i was allergic to. within three days, the swelling extended so far down my throat that it was pushing my pharanx to the side, causing trouble breathing, and there was a black necrotized region the size of a golf ball.

for brown recluse bites, none of the stuff they gave me would have helped. but its interesting how it can start out so similar... 
and kinda scary.


so far as having to pee the second you go into the tank...
well, that is something that every paratrooper in history can relate to! lol


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## EleGirl (Dec 3, 2011)

When my son was young... 2nd grade... he spent a lot of time playing I the desert with the other kids in the neighborhood.

From what he says, apparently scorpions are sort of a mild hallucinogen. Not exactly what you want your 2nd grader to tell you.


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## Woodchuck (Nov 1, 2012)

As'laDain said:


> you know whats funny is that the way you described it was exactly my same experiences with MRSA.
> 
> except that medical personnel assumed it was MRSA from the start because there had been a lot of cases since everyone came back from Haiti. they gave me an insane ****tail of IV and oral drugs, surgery on the site, and packed it full of a couple kinds of silver salts. i had to flush it out and repack it several times a day. they never gave me novocaine for it... military doctors...
> 
> ...


Actually, standard treatment for a recluse bite is either hyperbaric treatments or surgery and antibiotics...My Dr. said the surgery may have to be repeated several times. and suggested the hyperbaric.....Click on my bite picture and you can blow it up and see detail...You can see the ballpoint pen circle they drew around it on day 4....


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## Forest (Mar 29, 2014)

Scorpions, fiddlebacks (brown recluse), all appear regularly in glue traps in the corners, plus the odd black widow. I probably kill about 1 scorpion a month hanging around on the floor.

Outside, I kill a few pygmy rattlers every year, plus the odd rat snake that invades the chicken areas. Sometimes see a cottonmouth on the pond, or a copperhead in the woods. If it weren't for the chickens I'd leave those rat snakes completely alone, but you have to protect your livestock.


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## Forest (Mar 29, 2014)

Holly EFF.

This may seem a little beyond belief, but I just stepped on a scorpion in my garage. Got me thru the sock. Its a singular feeling. Like stepping on a small, yet hot and sharp nail.

It has probably been 25 years since one actually got me. Normally, I'd wear some clogs or something to go out there, but one slip.

Unreal. Painful, but could be worse. I did find and kill the little bastard.


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## Woodchuck (Nov 1, 2012)

Forest said:


> Holly EFF.
> 
> This may seem a little beyond belief, but I just stepped on a scorpion in my garage. Got me thru the sock. Its a singular feeling. Like stepping on a small, yet hot and sharp nail.
> 
> ...


A co worker went out in the dark to move his car wore flip flops. As he opened his car door, a small copperhead bit him on the end of his big toe...In the E.R. they told him the only treatment that they gave for copperhead bites was pain meds, unless the bite showed severe symptoms....Last year a guy in Missouri picked up a copperhead, was bitten, and died...very unusual...


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## tech-novelist (May 15, 2014)

I live in rural East Texas and we have plenty of snakes here, mostly rat snakes (harmless) with a few copperheads and water snakes of various kinds. I have no problem with snakes, as long as they aren't attacking me.

Scorpions, though, are another matter. We have plenty of those too, including one that fell out of the bathroom ceiling vent fan right in front of me while I was seated. :surprise:

Fortunately I had my shoes handy and was able to stomp it on the tile floor. They are really hard to kill, but I managed it. I don't want those in my house!


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## Forest (Mar 29, 2014)

The numbness and tingling lasted all night in that foot. Just now getting back to normal. Good thing I had a sock on at least.

Just an FYI for the scorpion plagued. I've had (fairly) good luck with the glue traps in corners (scorpions like to hug walls) and also with using boric acid along interior baseboards, and diatomaceous earth outside around walls and doors. Scorpions are allegedly pretty impervious to insecticides.

You have to kill either there food source, or use the boric acid to create tiny scratches to their body, which will also take them out. Roach powders are boric acid, generally.


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## As'laDain (Nov 27, 2011)

Woodchuck said:


> A co worker went out in the dark to move his car wore flip flops. As he opened his car door, a small copperhead bit him on the end of his big toe...In the E.R. they told him the only treatment that they gave for copperhead bites was pain meds, unless the bite showed severe symptoms....Last year a guy in Missouri picked up a copperhead, was bitten, and died...very unusual...


pigmy rattlers are kinda the same in that respect.
its quite unusual for someone to die from them. but, if you are allergic, it doesn't really matter how potent the venom or how much of it there is. a bee could kill you just a easily as a cobra.


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## As'laDain (Nov 27, 2011)

Forest said:


> The numbness and tingling lasted all night in that foot. Just now getting back to normal. Good thing I had a sock on at least.
> 
> Just an FYI for the scorpion plagued. I've had (fairly) good luck with the glue traps in corners (scorpions like to hug walls) and also with using boric acid along interior baseboards, and diatomaceous earth outside around walls and doors. Scorpions are allegedly pretty impervious to insecticides.
> 
> You have to kill either there food source, or use the boric acid to create tiny scratches to their body, which will also take them out. Roach powders are boric acid, generally.


i used to keep them as pets... every once in a while, a cage would get infested with mites that would eventually kill the scorpion if not taken care of. one of my first mistakes keeping scorpions was to treat the bedding of a flat rock scorpion with repel. i figured, it works for snakes, so why not scorpions? 

by the time i realized my mistake, the scorpion was already suffering from paralysis. after moving it to an entirely new cage with new bedding, it took about a week for it to die. 

so, permethrin will work, but it acts slowly.


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## RandomDude (Dec 18, 2010)

I will liquify and suck out your brains!!!


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## jdawg2015 (Feb 12, 2015)

I've been to the Penang (Malaysia) snake temple where they actually put the snakes on you. Freaked me right the **** out!

I've seen a cobra in the wild and it's a site to behold. Snakes are nothing I ever want to mess with. No thanks. LOL


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## Woodchuck (Nov 1, 2012)

We use glue traps for our recluse problem. We catch a half dozen a month now, compared to 12-20 before we started getting regular professional treatment...


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