Rittenhouse has been hospitalized with a spider bite, and I’m getting all this email asking if I was responsible. No, don’t be silly. If I had the power to sic spiders on people I don’t like, Mar-A-Lago and the White House would be so thickly infested with Black Widows and Brown Recluses that the entire Republican ruling class would be dead or hospitalized. I would not start with blubberin’ Kyle, much as he deserves it.
The communists couldn’t take me out and i’ll be damned if I let a brown recluse take me out
So now his paranoia is imagining invisible communists and spiders under his bed. He’s a weird sad sick individual.
Keep crying, killer.
Could his delusions be a result of the spider toxin or did the spider bite him because he was deluded?
Your “ hospitalized with a hospital bite” should be spider bite or brown recluse bite.
Call that a bite? Mate! Not even suppurating.
Has anyone checked that the spider hasn’t been poisoned?
I once was bitten by some lycosid while out sampling aquatic insects. Hurt like a bee sting and the two marks were visible for weeks, but it wasn’t serious otherwise.
Given that global warming is causing spiders to move to more northerly habitats, I would presume that the killer has fallen victim to the stupidity of his political orientation.
Well, spiders under his bed are plausible – unless he sleeps on a futon.
Communists under his bed not so much. Indeed seems he’s typical of reichwingers in NOT knowing what that word means.
Anyhow. Good. Hope it really hurts and gets infected you double murderer piece of racist shit.
John Morales @ 3
I understand that for an Australian, that tiny pinprick is laughable. I need to read up on the Australian species that should bite him. I recall they have bland names, considering the effect of the venom/toxins.
Myself # 8
Marine cone snails are fun. So are box jellyfish.
I hope the spider wasn’t injured and is safe.
What we need is a communist brown recluse.
@11: A red recluse?
won’t somebody think of the spider!
He should take it as a sign from some god to change his stupid, evil ways.
Fellow ex-Science Blogger Greg Laden has more on this. He doesn’t think it was a Brown Recluse, based on behavior and normal locations. He also points out that he thinks most so-called “spider bites” are misdiagnosed, referencing how a deep mosquito bite is very different from the little tiny itchy things we associate with them.
https://auspicioussubtext.substack.com/p/the-truth-about-the-brown-recluse
That said, he agrees it couldn’t happen (or shouldn’t happen) to a nicer guy.
I seriously doubt it is a spider bite. I have been photographing spiders for 20 years now, poking and prodding and generally harassing them for a good picture, and I have never had one even try to bite me. My daughter managed to goad a jumping spider into biting her once, but she freely admits that she had it coming. A few other people I have talked to over the years have actually witnessed a spider biting them, but in each case there was never any doubt that it was a spider, and they all admitted that the spider had a damned good reason for biting them, and they were immediately aware of it at the time.
Rittenhouse’s red inflamed patch could be any of dozens of different things, ranging from the bite of a blood-sucking insect, to a bacterial skin infection like cellulitis. Honestly, cellulitis would be a lot more dangerous than a spider bite in any case.
I am frankly mystified as to why people think that “spider bite” is even much of a thing. I mean, we live in a world were there are fleas, ticks, lice, mosquitos, biting flies, kissing bugs, chiggers, and all these other things that really do want to bite us specifically because they want our blood. And then there are all the stinging insects that have stings that were explicitly evolved as defensive weapons to drive off large animals like us. But spiders are not among either group. They do not want our blood, their venom and biting capabilities are not well suited for driving off large animals, and in my experience they will only bite as a last-ditch effort while they are being squashed. They certainly don’t crawl into your bed, give you a gratuitous bite, and then crawl away again with the satisfaction of a job well done.
If someone has a skin injury, but they did not witness what made it, then “spider bite” should be way, way, way down on our list of suspected causes. I will concede that sometimes spiders do bite, but unless the bitten person actually saw the spider do it, then I am deeply skeptical.
RB @12
Lol! Exactly. : )
@8. & #9 birgerjohansson :“I need to read up on the Australian species that should bite him. I recall they have bland names, considering the effect of the venom/toxins.”
Blue Ringed Octopus would be good..
See :
https://slate.com/technology/2015/06/blue-ringed-octopus-venom-causes-numbness-vomiting-suffocation-death.html
C’mon necrosis!
Brown recluse spiders don’t want to bite, but plenty of people have been bitten when they attempted to put on the shoe or other article of clothing the spider is hiding inside. You get in the habit of shaking out your shoes when you live in recluse habitat.
The far more common yellow sac spider is capable of delivering a painful bite, but it’s similar to a wasp sting. Poor spider was probably just minding its business, and then got squished by that ugly hairy creature sitting on it.
Or maybe also throw him into a Gympie gympie (Dendrocnide moroides) ..
https://allthatsinteresting.com/gympie-gympie
Being injected with spider venom and having his insides dissolve so the spider has a meal for decades would be a fitting end for Rittenhouse. I don’t give a flying fuck he was bitten, he hasn’t experience enough pain to equalize the pain he caused.
@18. Dangnabbit! Just realsied the link ther eto the Blue ringed Octopus article is semi-opaywalled. You can see it once but then it disappears and is only available tosubscribers toSlate -guess they giev you 1 free article only. Grr.. .
If I’d known I’d have posted an excerpt but since I can’t access it again now.. Guess I can’t. Sorry folks.
@#18 timothyeisele: You got it exactly right. I work in a hospital and we see “spider bites” all the time that are just old garden variety cellulitis. And the Brown Recluse really gets a bad rap; many people who claimed to have been bitten by one were nowhere near where the Recluse is actually found. Which makes me wonder where Rittenhouse was located when he was bitten; they are nowhere near the area of Illinois where he is from, but I have no idea where he lives now.
StevoR @ 20
Gympie gympie :
‘Though it’s covered in a layer of downy fuzz, the “hairs” of the gympie-gympie plant deliver a sting so toxic that the pain can last for years.’
I like the sound of that. Let’s put some seeds in Rittenhouse’s garden.
It should have been a Rabid Beaver
Forget sending black widows and brown recluses to Mar-a-Lago. I’ll happily supply some commie Sydney funnelwebs. On that note I don’t kill spiders. If they are potentially nasty I catch them and deposit them outside in the garden. Except for the funnelwebs. If I can I send them up north to be milked to produce anti-venom. Otherwise I leave spiders alone. I had a pet giant huntsman in my bathroom for a few months. It kept the population of those ugly American cockroaches in check. Yes I have been bitten. Five times in one night when I blundered into a large patch of orb-weaver webs in the dark. The result five red patches on my abdomen and a mild fever. Kyle is a weepy-wuss.
How can you be so uncaring.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the Brown Recluse spider.
[OT]
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/may/07/tiny-parasitic-wasp-named-after-david-attenborough-100th-birthday-attenboroughnculus-tau
↓
Tiny parasitic wasp named after David Attenborough for his 100th birthday
Specimen from 1983 lay forgotten at Natural History Museum until recently, when spotted by a volunteer and identified as new genus
He has lizards, bats, frogs, weevils, flatworms, snails and spiders named after him. But now Sir David Attenborough can celebrate his 100th birthday with an entirely new genus named in his honour.
Scientists from the Natural History Museum in London have paid tribute to the world-renowned broadcaster for his 100th birthday on 8 May by describing a new genus of parasitic wasp and a new species found within the museum’s collections.
@ 18/22 StevoR
Here you go buddy. Little bit of google-fu and it’s all good.
https://archive.is/7UcN4
As taco nacho tRUMP and his magat administration’s talk and actions prove, all these big macho xtian terrorists are really cry-baby cowards.
Of course you aren’t overt about it. Realpolitik requires that the growing spider take over is below the radar. Wait till the Rittenhouse style attacks are normalised then ramp up a notch.
I get it. Wink wink. Nudge nudge.