Hi all, One of the most interesting cases I ever saw was a 10 month old baby with lots of curly dark hair, who came into the hospital with petechiae (blood blotches under the skin) and VERY sick! Her lab values were completely out of whack, especially with regard to coagulation. Everyone was baffled. As an area of her head was shaved for an IV site someone noticed a stange bite (sort of in the area between her temple and the top of her ear). The bug experts were called in, and it turned out to be the bite of a Brown Recluse Spider, commonly found in the south (this was in Knoxville, TN). The baby had developed disseminated intravascular coagulation from the toxins in that bite. For those outside of the medical/nursing world..DIC, as it's called, is DEADLY ! Anyway, she was treated aggressively with blood products and heparin and did well eventually. The spider probably crawled into the house and bit her in her sleep. That was an eye-opening experience for me..I also was under the impression that all those really bad spiders were just in a bad horror movie! So that's my response to the post about black widows, etc. THEY 'RE OUT THERE! Jan