Hobo Spider Bites

Posted on August 25, 2009
Filed Under General | 6 Comments

Hobo SpiderHere is the mug shot of my blog post subject today. Its called the Hobo Spider aka the aggressive house spider and for good reason. My recent encounter with this infectious parasite makes me wish it was on the endangered species list. The bite a full 50% of the time is not toxic, go figure the odds were not in my favor since both times they bit me, both were venomous.

How ugly can these bites really be? Well let me give you just a brief idea and you decide for yourself. I had originally written this post as a quickie, no great detail and no effort to highlight anything in particular. Two days after this original post I was told that if the infection and swelling in my foot did not recede in a few days that they would amputate my toe where one of the bites were. I had originally thought that the bite, although painful, was actually in check and not advancing at all. Therein lies the deception with these types of spiders. You think its just a little red mark that itches, some mild infection and swelling and it reduces and you think its nothing. Then the destruction of all the flesh around the bite starts to take place and you end up with a hole that gets bigger and bigger until it gets to be alarming. This is no misquito bite or mild bee sting, this is much worse.

The Hobo Spider is rather infamous for this kind of destruction. Even the feared Recluse spider has nothing on this devil in terms of reputation. There are even sites dedicated to it beginning with the HoboSpider.org and many CDC related sites at universities where they study the effects and health issues surrounding the bite.

I’ve done a fair bit of research about this arachnid and discovered that the bite is as deadly as the Brown Recluse, more random, more frequent, and most often between the month of August until the first freeze. In my house I managed to kill one every single night for the past two weeks. As I’ve read, they hunt at night and have poor vision adding to their aggressive behavior and chance encounters with sleeping victims. They say that they are attracted to sound and movement. So, I decided to locate one and test the idea that sound attracts them, so a few feet from the spider made a little noise with a spoon to see if it would come running. No such luck, it actually scared it away. Apparently its stealth they prefer.

One interesting fact I found was that even though only 50% of their bites are venomous, they still account for a full 75% of all hospital visits for stings, bites and injuries caused by bugs during the same seasonal time period. It has also been suggested that spraying for them may not be good because the hobo spider unlike others is rather resilient and durable and can survive many things that kill other spiders and insects. By spraying you tend to exterminate its primary enemy and natural predator the giant house spider.

Anyway, enough of the post revision to correct a few things and detail about the effects of this guys bite, time to get caught up from 4 days of not working. Remember, my nemesis is your nemesis and every chance you have to kill one, do it, you are doing the world a favor.

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6 Comments so far
  1. Karen Stennon August 26, 2009 4:41 pm

    Hello Jared I found your post in google today and I actually came seeking more information on treatment but see that you are a blogger or web designer.

    My 4 year old daughter was bitten by a hobo and she had horrible reactions to the bite. I was curious if your encounter was while you slept because I’m concerned that these spiders will come back. She is terrified of all bugs now and can’t sleep at night.

    You don’t have to share any information if you don’t want to and please forgive me if I am not welcome to ask.

    I hope you are feeling better.

  2. Jared Ritchey August 26, 2009 10:11 pm

    Hello Karen, no intrusion so there is no apology required.

    This is my personal blog where I rant about many subjects most of which is related to my work but this isn’t my business website so I welcome your comments.

    I’m truly sorry to hear about your daughters encounter with this spider, I hope she is doing well. My situation or encounter involved a bite on my foot after putting on my boot in the morning, apparently one had decided to camp out that evening inside and I suffered the first bite. The second bite came that evening, I fell asleep in my leather office chair and the bite was on the abdominal area just above the belt.

    Both bites festered rather quickly but I didn’t have the typical nausea and head ache that most suffer. I actually didn’t get sick this time around. What I ended up with was lots of tissue damage, infection and burning pain around the bite on my foot. The one on my fat belly really didn’t hurt it was just damaging to the skin and ended up being about 9 centimeters in diameter before receding.

    Both kept me out of work for three days since sitting or standing for long periods of time made the burning sensation in my foot become unbearable. Even now the antibiotics and pain medicine is pretty slow acting with searing pain still present.

    I can’t really answer to treatment but I’ve been told that I should avoid lots of coffee, alcohol and aspirin and that soaking the foot in cool water with the antibacterial solution is also good.

    Best regards for your little girl and thanks for your comments. I’m certainly willing to compare notes about this if you wish.

  3. Jared Ritchey August 26, 2009 10:13 pm

    Oh and I’m curious, what did you use as a search term in google. I can’t actually find my post using the title.

  4. Karen Stennon August 31, 2009 11:18 am

    Jared I found it on the forum you posted about your encounter, sorry it wasn’t google.

  5. chris September 14, 2009 3:37 pm

    Burn it with fire!!! Seriously, you caught one every night and still live there?! You are one brave soul my friend.

  6. Jared Ritchey September 18, 2009 11:05 am

    Yeah well its fall time now and they are not an issue now. Our entire area has these things as a pretty popular pest.


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