Sanguisuga, the name says it all. Every year about this time the evil little bloodsucking bastards find their way into my home here at Weazelworld in north Florida. They generally go in pairs, so if you find one keep looking. Strip the bed being careful to look inside pillow cases and between the mattress and box springs until you get to the bed frame then look under it. They rarely go far after having had a blood meal. If you don’t live in a hermetically sealed box then Kukulcania spiders (House tarantulas) are your best defense provided you don’t mind having huge black spiders living all around your bed. I don’t cuz I know who my friends are. By the way, a male Kukulcania looks exactly like a giant brown recluse spider; whereas the females are big black and fuzzy. The males wander so I sometimes kill them for trespassing, but the monster females never stray from their cobweb covered crevice. As a result I have had them living for years right next to my head while I sleep but they have never bothered me. On several occasions I have found shriveled kissing bug in their webs. Go girls! Even sleeping in a tent isn’t entirely safe. In Belize and elsewhere in the tropics I have often found Reduviids under the tent while breaking camp in the morning. To the best of my knowledge I’ve never been bitten that way, but it is hard to believe they couldn’t easily pierce tent fabric. The bottom line is that they are evil, and 99% of the so called “spider bites” in the night are due to Reduviids, not spiders. Likewise, when someone shows me a rotting wound supposedly caused by a spider bite it is almost always due to a staph infection but spiders always get the blame. Sleaze In a message dated 6/19/2012 1:06:28 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, texascavers-digest-h...@texascavers.com writes:
If you can catch the thing, here is what you need to know. Mail the package to: Dr. Kristy Orsburn Murray 6118 Lymbar Dr. Houston, TX 77096 Send her an email at _kmurray@bcm.edu_ (mailto:kmur...@bcm.edu) and let her know it’s coming. Place the bug in a zip lock bag in a hard box (Turn a small UPS priority mail box inside out and write her address on the box. Let her know where you caught the bug (house, outbuilding, garden, yard, porch, etc) Address where the bug was caught or GPS location. Time and Date: Include your name, email, and address and hopefully, she can send you the results. That’s it. Geary
