The Truth About Black Widow Spiders
There is no worse fate, no greater or more gruesome
bad luck, than to be bitten by a black widow spider. This
was the firmly held opinion of everybody I knew when I was
a kid. It wasn’t just my friends who thought this.
Adults believed it, too.
We knew a black widow’s bite meant death would follow, but only after a prolonged period of terrible suffering. There would be boils and ulcers that turned green and wept pus. There would be swelling in the arms and legs, and delirium.
We lived in a rural environment where many-legged creatures crossed our paths every day. None had the chilling effect of the black widow. The truth about these spiders remained a mystery until a cousin from Chicago came to spend the summer.
Niki was my age. She slept in my room. “She’s ten, like you,” my mother explained. “She’ll be your playmate this summer.”
At first I didn’t mind sharing my room. But then I found out Niki snored. It was a snore that could keep even sound sleepers like me awake.
I was afraid to complain about Niki’s snoring, but one morning I was so tired I nearly fell asleep at breakfast. “I’m sleeping out tonight,” I announced, expecting an argument. None came.
“Me, too,” Niki said.
I hadn’t bargained on her joining me. I thought she was afraid of everything, from climbing hay bales in the barn to wading in the ditch.
“You won’t like it,” I insisted. “It’s scary in the dark outside. You’ll hate it.”
“Niki can sleep out if she likes,” my mother said evenly. “And you’ll look after her.”
I was stuck.
That
night we lay our sleeping bags side by side on the ground
next to a flower bed. We both slept soundly. Niki hardly
snored at all. I was first to awaken in the morning.
I sat up and rubbed my eyes and then looked at Niki. I saw a small red swelling on her wrist. It had a white dot in the middle. It was a bite, and it had not been there when we went to sleep.
I stared at the bite and realized I’d never seen a bite quite like it. I had seen lots of stings made by bees, wasps, and hornets. Niki’s bite was different.
By the time we were sitting at the breakfast table, Niki’s arm was swollen to the elbow. The white dot was about the size of a quarter, and the skin around it was purple.
“What happened to your arm?” my mother asked Niki.
“I got bitten,” Niki answered. “Something bit me while we were sleeping out.”
“Looks like a spider bite,” my father said.
“Is it painful?” my mother asked.
Niki was about to cry, but checked her tears. “It hurts a lot!” she said. “It’s really sore!”
“This is serious,” my mother said. “We’d better take Niki to town and have the doctor check this out.”
On the way to town Niki got dizzy and sick to her stomach. We had to stop twice so she could throw up by the side of the road.
I knew what was happening, and I felt responsible. Black widows had spun webs in the flower bed near the spot where we’d slept. Niki would be dead in a few days, the victim of a black widow’s bite. I could say nothing. It was too horrible. If I’d tolerated her snoring, we’d have slept inside and she would still be fine.
The doctor who examined Niki let my mother and me stay to watch.
“Black widow bite, that’s my guess,” he said. “She’s having a severe reaction to the venom, but she’ll be fine.”
“She’ll be fine?” I asked, astonished. “She won’t die? Are you sure? How can you know she’ll be OK?”
“People rarely die of black widow bites,” the doctor said, smiling at me gently. “Niki is strong and healthy. She needs a few days’ rest, that’s all.”
I looked at Niki’s arm, now swollen to the shoulder. I wanted badly to believe that she wouldn’t die, that she’d grow up like any other kid.
Niki did recover, after four days in bed. I sat with her and read books to her.
When she was better, I told her it was my fault she’d been bitten. She was surprised at my confession.
“It’s not your fault,” she said. “I know I snore. I knew you were trying to get away from my snoring. But I wanted to be brave, like you.”
“You are brave,” I said. “You didn’t even cry when you got bitten.”
That conversation sealed our friendship.
Niki became famous in the neighborhood for having survived a black widow’s bite. Kids came to see the ulcer that appeared when the swelling went down.
“Is that ulcer going to spread all over you?” one of them asked.
Niki glanced at me. I could see she was tempted to fool her audience. Instead she said, “No. I’ll be fine, really soon.”
Now I know that spider bites are rarely fatal, even those of black widows. Spiders’ venom is best for killing grasshoppers, flies, and other insect prey, not humans. Our fear of them is fifty times stronger than any venom they inject when they bite us.
