Argh. Eff. This is really becoming quite disconcerting. I found another brown recluse in the sink today. It's tiny, but so what? I started wondering why I've found two of them in the sink and looked up at the cupboard over the sink, the one that is hardly ever opened. I have already had visions, or daymares if you will, of checking underneath the bottom drawers under the counters, of pulling them out to find recluse farms below. So I got the stepstool, placed it well away from the counter, climbed up, and carefully opened the cupboard to find...another recluse, a big one. At least it wasn't a whole farm of them. I need advice. And I need to import lots of jumping spiders, a natural predator of the brown recluse.
A photo of today's brown recluse:
What I've learned since then:
The big spider (in the first photo in this post, above) in the cupboard above the sink WAS a recluse, but the little guy in the sink (photos below) was not, nor was the spider in the post of 5.20.2008. Why? Today's photos show that this spider has spines on its legs, which recluses do not have, and the spider in the earlier post is the same kind as today's little one (obviously the same kind to the naked eye, if not so obvious in the pics). Which means we've had only three recluses this year, and not five. Small comfort, some might say, but I will take what comfort I can. See next post for what else I've learned about brown recluses!
A photo of today's other spider that is NOT a brown recluse, and which I've since learned is a striped lynx spider, Oxyopes salticus Hentz:
So, by the way, this is another really good reason not to kill any spider, even one you think is dangerous, because you might be wrong. Even the dangerous ones don't want to hurt you, or even be near you; they just want to live their little spider lives. So don't kill—just remove from human vicinity, if necessary.
I include this poorer photo because I like how it looks as though the little spider is wearing boxing gloves
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