Brown recluse spiders in closets and garages: a Panhandle guide

In many Amarillo homes the garage is where storage goes to sit. Holiday decorations, camping gear, paint cans, boxes from the last move, a stack of lumber against the wall. Each of those is a hiding place, and the garage connects directly to the house through the laundry room or kitchen door.

Our technicians often find recluses in the same garage spots: behind shelving units pushed against the wall, inside rolled-up rugs and tarps, in boxes sitting directly on the slab, inside work gloves and boots left on the floor, and along the bottom edge of the overhead door. Garages that rarely get swept build up dead insects, which is a food supply for spiders.

Changing a few habits makes a garage much less inviting. Store items in sealed plastic tubs with tight lids instead of cardboard. Get boxes off the floor onto metal shelving pulled a few inches away from the wall. Hang tools and gloves instead of leaving them on the workbench. Sweep the corners and along the walls every month or so.

Recluse bites get a lot of attention, and some of it is overblown. The Texas Panhandle Poison Center has said that only about 10 percent of brown recluse bites cause tissue damage. Most bites heal on their own with a red, irritated spot and no lasting harm.

Bites usually happen when a spider gets pressed against skin: putting on a shirt that hung in the closet for months, pulling on a work glove, rolling over onto a spider that wandered into bedding. The bite itself is often not painful at first, so people may not notice until hours later.

If you think you've been bitten, wash the area, apply a cool compress and call the poison center or your doctor for advice, especially if the bite spot darkens, grows or the person feels ill. If you can safely catch the spider in a jar, keep it for identification. Many spots blamed on recluses turn out to be something else, so a confirmed spider helps everyone.

On a recluse visit, our technician starts by asking where you've seen spiders and checking any glue boards you've put out. Then they inspect the closets, laundry room, garage, attic access and any storage rooms, looking for live spiders, shed skins and the loose, irregular webs recluses leave in corners.

Treatment focuses on the places spiders hide rather than open floors. That usually means a residual product along baseboards, behind furniture and in closet corners, a dust in wall voids, outlets on exterior walls and the attic, and a crack and crevice treatment along the garage walls and door frames. Fresh glue boards go down in the spots that matter so we can track progress. Because recluses are hard to clear in one pass, most homes need a follow-up visit. We explain re-entry times and keep children and pets in mind when choosing placements. Call (806) 552-3060 if you are seeing them; we answer around the clock.