I have been experiencing um, a life changing series of events around arachnid relations.
After three years of being out here finding a balance with the scorpions even though they surprise me being unseasonably uncharacteristically in places that I wouldn't expect them and constantly reminding me to be vigilant and to be less complacent, there turns out to be another vector of venom another dangerous insect.
I have been only partially aware this whole time. And it's not the black widow, because I have had my first and only encounter with the black widow here within the first couple of years.
The last place I was at, there was a lot of them and I felt like there was some sort of a cosmic warning that I would get, and maybe it was not metaphysical at all.
Just out of my peripheral vision to notice a certain type of web, and then kind of freeze, and even in mid step to take a good close look and then realize...that's something that we've been evolved to take notice of. So the deal is I try to escort them to safety as needed. I don't intentionally kill them ever. If they're in “my” areas, then I'm gonna escort them to where they will be happier someplace else, and I won't have to worry about accidentally injuring or killing them, and vice versa.
But this is a species that I didn't just have my first encounter with, but that I had been encountering on numerous occasions, and
had thought almost nothing of it.
Seems like it would be between a half a dozen and a dozen different distinct species of spiders that I've observed out here the camel spider, the scorpion, the black widow and these amazing, I don't know, haven't identified them yet, but I, I'm more excited to know, they have these very, almost like be jeweled joints on their legs and their night ground hunters, I haven't ever seen them in a web. I've only seen them at night, really.
They’re about the size of a sand dollar or the size of the palm of the hand perhaps, I never felt threatened by them.
They didn't fit any of the characteristics of dangerous north American spiders but I always had a bit of a gray area question mark about these other ones that I would see quite often, that I kept saying to myself, you better look up brown recluse and make sure that you're not looking at a bunch of brown recluse spiders every time you see them.
Where you often see them, which is, lo and behold, their behavior, grouping together and being reclusive and really enjoying the crevices of cardboard boxes.
That's where I would always see these packs of spiders that would come out, and they were brown.
I had just told myself deeply inside that my knowledge of them was that they had different proportions to their body and some of the identifying characteristics you would almost need a microscope or have them immobilized, which I don't wanna even mess with trying to do that.
But I had the gut feeling that I better look into it a little closer because I had been moving some stuff around kind of resetting my protocols and procedures for evacuation and really reorganizing a lot of stuff and they're just everywhere they could possibly be where there was any shade that I was providing.
So I don't know how many dozens of them I've seen over the years, but, I take a box out from some place and I just already know intuitively I gotta drag it out jump away, open it up.
A bunch of them are gonna climb out and run out and do their thing, and I'll just stay out of their way.
And so upon closer inspection and more research, it turns out it's considered very, if not extremely rare for the brown recluse proper to be on the West coast.
However, it has a very similar looking, related species called the desert recluse.
So, don't get too excited to know that the brown recluse, this isn't their turf.
Because it turns out, oh, you could be mistaken and confusing it for what it really is, which is a desert recluse, which does inhabit this area, and by all of the characteristics listed to identify them, that appears to be exactly what I've been encountering this whole time.
And the fun part is they are equipped with venom that can cause necrosis of the tissue, meaning almost like something like battery acid on the skin, meaning it will cause cell death in the surrounding area of the bite.
It gets confusing for me because I don't know exactly how to compare the brown recluse damage versus the desert recluse damage. But apparently it's similar, so if it's anywhere near the most extreme, which is systemic meaning, not just on the point of the bite, but in the bloodstream, going systemic and affecting other organs, fever, nausea, dizziness.
Affecting younger people, older people with compromised immune systems, etc.
It doesn't seem to be that lethal, but it could be, depending on where the bite happens.
It could be pretty nasty in terms of causing the death of tissue around it that becomes gangrenous and eventually sluffs off and hopefully heals.
But I don't know if this is correct. I believe in the readings that I was looking at, it said that there were only three venomous or dangerous arachnids, they listed black widow, brown recluse, and Chilean recluse.
So who knows? I'm not an expert. I would love to learn more as I grow.
But it's interesting when you get into a rhythm or a pattern with a creature not knowing the whole time that it could do you serious bodily harm.
I try to not be paranoid about spiders, but that can be an over overconfidence.
There was only one time with these ones that I was moving a box, and didn't inspect it as thoroughly as I normally would for whatever reason.
I saw movement in the corner of my eye, and as a reflex, I just drop the box.
But for the most part, I'm very careful to make sure that they escape safely.
I believe that one also did the same.
But it's an interesting psychology to feel like, wow, all of those encounters, any one of them could have been maybe not lethal, but could have given me a real bad day, if not much longer.
So it's a humbling thing. Luckily, I haven't learned the hard way with any of these relations of mine, none of them have done me in yet or given me, a real run for my money.
As far as the bites and stings, there's been a lot of bites and stings from a number of flying insects and certainly what I believe are called seed harvester ants, that are the most prolific biters and stingers of me.
I don't wanna say that they're a menace, cause I'm a guest in their territory. I think I make them happy with what they get as a bonus of my being here, in terms of the drops of water that spill out sometimes, and the food crumbs, and certainly the seeds that they've eaten, but I respect them and I fear them.
They've raided my bedroom before. So a lot of my bandwidth goes into designing a peaceful relationship with them and it's just these layers of creatures that I have to account for.
So no real hard lessons, though with coyotes there have been some losses of things, other than my limbs, and other than mild rashes, the bites and stings of various creatures, but no big losses. So I'm grateful for that.
Now I feel part of the process of being here is, paying respect to and trying to develop an understanding of who really is dwelling here, who's really adapted to be dwelling here, and whether or not I'm like a fool, inviting them to take habitation all up and around me with no consciousness of what their habits are and what their prerogatives are.
So I did some modifications to put a little more distance from between where they were liking to hang out in my stuff, and where I sleep, and stuff like that.
I have no interest in being at war with anything. I just didn't know that they existed. I did not know there was such a thing as a desert recluse that's related to the brown recluse.
I don't know how many, dozens of them, I've been very, very close with, in a very innocent and happy go lucky kind of manner.
I'm not the kind of person who would invite them to climb on me for fun or to bond. I’d be using pliers to grab something if I was concerned that they might be hiding within it, and then they'd be able to get out safely, and I'd be able to not have my fingers grabbing something out of a box and knowing that they were gonna be all over it.
So, yes, one of those sighs of relief, I've been lucky so far and from now on, there's no excuse not to know better.
I hope that they welcome me, I welcome them into my consciousness and now if you did not know that there was such a thing as a desert recluse related to the brown recluse, well now you do, and you know, it's all over this the Southwestern United States, and they love cardboard because it reminds them of their native habitat they preferred dwelling in.
Which apparently is decaying bark and woody type matter. So there's something kind of charming about how, even though cardboard is this processed product, it bears very little resemblance to its natural original form.
It still attracts the desert recluse spiders. So, yes, cardboard plays a big role in my life as a permaculture designer.
Even in my professional career, I've worked for and with a recycling company, done quite a bit of cardboard recycling in my day.
So there's something a bit charming about that. But like I said, gonna design a little bit more space between me and the desert recluse and salute from now on when I see one.
I should have done my research sooner so I'd have that additional humility and additional design sense.
I've made a shift on their behalf. I actually realized that one of the features that I designed and built out here was partially subterranean, partially dug into the ground and actually surrounded by mulch for use for future tree plantings.
I don't know why. I had always been afraid of it a little I was like, you know what? Something about it? I don't wanna hang out there.
But now I realize I was worried about scorpions, but I had seen a lot of these desert recluse spiders, unbeknownst to me what they were at the time.
I was just like, oh, well, I can live with that.
I realized, well, it's a good thing, I was a little bit afraid of the scorpions that kept me out of there. As I was dismantling and moving it, I saw a couple of the other desert recluse spiders.
And I also discovered a dried corpse of a giant tarantula.
So on that note, I'm getting the the the universal arachnid thought response effects with the just feeling that whatever the chemicals are surging through my bloodstream and goose bumps and hairs raising.
It is an interesting experience of humility to look at something so small relative to your your size, and say, you could radically transform my destiny and you're everywhere. And I'm just me. Even though I look bigger, I'm actually a lot smaller.
So it's a good spiritual lesson about knowing your place in the cosmos and checking your ego.
So I have the blessing of making these acquaintances and hopefully friends at some level, and my design will reflect my respect and humility towards the indigenous creatures.