Dear Answer Girl,
The other day I found a spider in my dorm. Are there any poisonous spiders that I should be aware of that could be living in the dorm?
Arachno PhobicAbsolutely. But before you go flattening innocent arachnids with your shoe, you may be comforted by the fact that almost all spiders are poisonous. Ha ha ha. Yes, lots of comfort there.
Okay, so maybe “poisonous” is too negative. “Capable of producing venom” is more accurate, I think. But do you know how many people die of spider bites in the U.S. each year? Six. Twelve die of bee stings, so you should be twice as afraid of bees getting into your dorm room than spiders.
I really don’t want to go off on some spiders-are-our-friends spiel or anything, but if you want something that you can justify worrying about, it’s obvious that the true and dangerous enemies are bees.
Speaking of in-home dangers, consider these exciting facts from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s state profile for Tennessee, 1989-1998 (http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/StateProfiles/sip_tn.pdf): As a proud resident of beautiful Tennessee, you enjoy a rate of injury that surpasses the national average in 8 out of 9 categories. That’s right, Tennessee has a higher rate per 100,000 people of death due to homicides, falls, suicide, fires/burns, drownings, traumatic brain injuries, and particularly motor vehicle and firearms-related accidents.
The only category that we do not surpass that national average in, interestingly, is poisonings, although that is the third leading cause of unintentional injury deaths in our state. Whew.
Not surprisingly, spider bites did not even make it into the report as a side note.
So, my advice to the spider fearers is simple: You’d be better off breeding poisonous spiders as personal pets while sitting comfortably in your bed than getting up and doing anything else.
Once you wake up and climb out of bed, you could drown, burn yourself, get shot or shoot yourself, suffer a traumatic brain injury, or have a car wreck. And since you live in Tennessee, all of these are just a little bit more likely than if you lived in, say, Rhode Island, where your biggest fear is that the country will suddenly find an even tinier place to be the nation’s smallest state.
So, see … unless you are one of the unlucky six spider deaths each year, you have absolutely nothing to worry about in that arena.
Keep an eye on those bees, though.

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