Unknown Bite In My Front Yard.. OUCH

[flamingo-kid1]

I live in Rockford, IL.. and went out ( at 7:30 a.m. on a cloudy day) to my truck to bring in some things I had bought yesterday..

I have yucca plants on either side of my front sidewalka nd most mornings there is a large web spun across th ewalk between them. It's always empty.

TODAY I didn't see it,, because of the clouds, and walked through it, .. I felt something brush the side of my face and I brushed it away and got a bite!

Now I have some tingling in my arms and I can see two little fang marks. so now I know it wasn't a bee.
Whatever it was, it's wasn't little.. the fang marks are far apart.

I used a Benzocaine stick to stop the stinging.. ..

I'm going out tomorrow to see who/what it was.. unless I'm laying in the hospital with my arm rotting off, gasping for air...

Seriously, I have an average of 23 tarantulas and have never been bitten after 30 years.. so what's up with THIS??

ooops.. forgot to mention.. the bite is on my little finger.
It's quite a bit later in the morning and it's still quite painful :-(

 

[flamingo-kid1]

I'm still alive

Gonna go have at least TWO Blue Hawaiis to ease my pain

we don't have any highly venomous spideys here in IL that I know of.. or at least none that would spin a HUGE beautiful web every day.. but I don't think an Argiope would bite me?

We do have lots of bats, possums, coons, owls, hawks and even a family of turkey vultures and also a family of foxes.... ( I have a new puppy this year and have kept her under lock and key.. none of the above are murderers but they ARE opportunists)

In any case, whatever it was was VERY venomous and a little critter would have died INSTANTLY.

 

[arachyd]

I had a similar experience a month or 2 ago. I suspect it was an orb weaver because in the past I had unpleasant and unexpected reactions to their bites. This time I was tending my rabbits when I was bitten by something unseen on the pinky side of my ring finger about 8:30 am. The rabbit hutches are thickly covered in morning glory vines. I didn't feel the bite, just an itchy prickling sensation at first. By 10:00 am I had to leave work because my hand, wrist and arm up past the elbow had swollen so bad I looked like I had one of Popeye's arms (I do a lot of typing). My hand looked like a latex glove someone had blown up as a balloon. I did find a couple of very long strands of web across the enclosure where I keep my rabbit hutches that attached to the door of one of the hutches. Nothing around here makes that kind of web except the Araneus species as far as I know and they are very common. I've seen them span an 8' gap between trees across a hiking trail and rebuild the web every evening if it is torn. I didn't put it in as a bite report because I generally react to bites differently from most people.

Edit-- Yes, sorry, I should have stated there were no lasting problems. It took about a week for all the swelling to go down. The only pain was in the joints of my hand and wrist probably from swelling.