Just because it's too hot to work outside right now.....
All spiders are venomous; it is how they kill their prey. How venomous? That is unknown for over 99% of even the known species. You know that small common house spider? the one that spins a little silky cocoon to sleep in during the day, often along moldings? It is both venomous and aggressive. At night it comes out of its little nest and actively roams the house. It LOVES a warm bed with humans in it. It will climb in your bed and bite you while you sleep, and depending on your sensitivity, you get either a weird red spot and you can't figure out what bit you, all the way up to full-blown tissue necrosis. When a doctor treats a necrotizing spider bite, it is automatically assigned to a brown recluse if the person has no idea what bit him. Because it is relatively common and known to be toxic. But the truth is we don't really know. There are over 2,300 species of wolf spider alone, at least 200 of which live in the United States. Very few have been studied. NOT ON THIS PROPERTY OR I WOULD MOVE, but other places, I have personally encountered individuals that grossly exceeded all known limits for size, and even with extensive research and speaking with local biologists, to this day cannot identify. To wit, a web between two trees that was 12 feet wide containing a black slightly-furred individual 4 inches across. Not huge, but there is no species of black orb-weaver anywhere near that size in the NE US. Or is there? Or the jet black monster found in a garage that was 9 measured inches across. And a pair of funnel-web species almost that big (a close relative to the deadly Sydney funnel web, BTW, but believed to be much less venomous; at least the species that have been studied). I have multiple witnesses to all of these horrors.
Okay, now I've really scared myself.
