Whenever I watch gardening shows I constantly complain to anyone who will listen (and plenty who won’t) that the presenters should be wearing gloves. Apart from the fact that dirt is, well, dirty, it’s also full of evil creatures waiting to kill you. And none quite so keen to dispatch you as a redback spider.
Well, that’s probably not quite true. But as a child the redback was the most feared creature around. From the way other kids talked at school you didn’t stand a chance if you came across one. A bite meant certain death. On the spot. Probably before you’d even noticed you’d been bitten.
As an adult, though, I understand that the redback isn’t quite as fiercesome as I once thought. According to Wikipedia only 14 fatal redback bites have been recorded. Not that that’s much comfort to those 14 people. But it sounds like a redback bite can still be very painful; reading through the symptoms of a bite I don’t think I want to experience one. So I wear gloves.
I found the one in the picture while repotting a poinsettia. I picked up the new pot and immediately dropped it again. Probably gave the poor spider as much of a fright as it gave me.
Comments
Acacia wrote:
Good reminder for me!! , I usually go out barefoot and gloveless but now the weather’s warming up, I really should be wearing gloves and appropriate footwear!!!
I seem to be breeding these spiders in my shed, ugh.
Thankfully for me the most common spider i’ve found so far in my garden beds where I do most of the hands on work are little brown striped harmless spiders that race off as soon as I disturb them. :)
Posted on 13 Oct 11 (over 1 year ago)
AnneTanne wrote:
We don’t have dangerous spiders here, but we have to take care for ticks… Those can be prevented from biting by wearing gloves, so that means ‘tick-check’ every evening after gardening.
I’m still searching for a comfortable pair of gloves: supple, yet sturdy…
I don’t always wear gloves, except when I’m ‘on call’, to prevent my hands from getting too dirty.
Posted on 13 Oct 11 (over 1 year ago)
Russell wrote:
Your sentiments on Redbacks we exactly what I thought growing up in Brisbane too. Bck then though, they were a rarity, but nowadays, they seem to be everywhere.
At least now we’ re in the ranges, they don’t like the cold. Even though, I’ve seen a couple here, but I’ve been scared to death by more Eastern Brown snakes here than Redbacks, and whenever i think of it, those dback tales of childhood become brown snake truisms of manhood!
Posted on 14 Oct 11 (over 1 year ago)
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