Today, I had my first run-in with a venomous creature in Australia. I was enjoying a peaceful, relaxing shower, completely oblivious to the horrors on the other side of the shower curtain. I shut off the water, grabbed my towel, then suddenly it struck! From under my boxer shorts crawled the elusive white-tail! Thankfully, vigilance and ball of tissue made quick work of the poisonous menace.
The white-tail is one of three venomous spiders in Australia. Rarely has the bite of the white-tail killed someone. They are basically the equivalent of our Brown Recluse. It is uncommon for them to come out into the open, but their bites can be quite painful and can cause gangrene. Anti-venom is widely available. I am glad I caught it though; if not, it would have remained in my boxer shorts. I doubt I or my future children would appreciate rotting flesh in that area of the body.
(Post-script: Two weeks later, finally connected to the Internet, I have deduced that my encounter was most likely not with the rare white-tail. The spider I saw looked much like the above, yet most photos of the white-tail do not look like this. The post has remained posted because it makes me feel like Steve Irwin or something. This is no way suggests that Steve Irwin would ever kill a white-tail with a tissue...maybe it is Steven Segal I was emulating.)
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