#fiddle spider

In short, I want a brown recluse spider.

I have no idea where this idea came from, literally no memory of the thought process that got me here.  All I know is that I had the idea from when I rose early this morning and I was on it all day.  A dream, a just-past-sleep "creative brain" idea, something else, I will never know.

You see, I am very familiar with the black widow spider.  I have myself seen countless dozens (if not hundreds) of specimens, wild or not, have interacted with them in the daylight, at night, up close, far away.  I have fed them, searched for them, experimented with them, learned how to make them think I was an insect stuck in their web.  I know how fast they can run, I know that they are shy and hate light, and I can identify their webs without a hitch (finding the lairs of these black widows without ever needing to actually see one).

Long story short, I am familiar with these ladies of the night.  But what about the brown recluse?  Where I grew up, we did not have this spiders at all.  To this date, even though my region does occasionally have them, I still have never seen one.  As one of only two "deadly" (to humans) North American spider, this is unacceptable.  I want to get to know the brown recluse just as well as I know the black widow!

I placed a bounty at work today: the first person to bring me a live, healthy, unharmed specimen of a brown recluse spider would get money.  Currently I'm at $10, and despite asking the entire office I only have one person who is really interested in looking (a second is waiting until I will pay him $20).  I of course mentioned that I accept zero legal responsibility if someone handles the spider so poorly as to get bitten.  It was admittedly a very fun break-time activity.  People's reactions were priceless when I simply said, "Do you possibly have brown recluse spiders in your home?  If you see one, and you catch it and bring it to me alive, unharmed, and healthy, I will pay you!"

Why I started doing this at work of all places I don't know, consequence of getting up too early and not thinking twice about the idea of some amature arachnology perhaps.