The Future Home of Iditarod Dreams: Hey was that Theresea Russell?
If you are old enough or corny enough to remember the 1987 movie staring Dennis Hopper, Theresa Russell and Debra Winger, called Black Widow, or at least know the story about the famous spider: “she mates and she kills,” you would understand what I went through over the past few days.
No, this is not some sort of Saturday Night crime drama show, I was literally attacked by all of the Black Widow spiders while cleaning out the kennel at our new home. There were enough of those little creepy crawlers to call John Goodman from Arachnophobia and not to mention that both my wife Michele and son Kyle are both deathly afraid of the eight-legged monsters.
I suffered four bites on my right arm and one just below my right knee. They don’t hurt too much but they itch like something fierce! Of course, I looked up ‘black widow spider bites’ on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is my Internet best friend. I often find myself looking up useless information about everything under the sun while watching movies or driving down the highway or any other time it catches my fancy. In this totally absorbed-connected-world we live in we must seek out information at all times and of course there is an app for that (wikipedia on iPhone). Being mildly a hypochondriac I realized I have all of the symptoms of the classic black widow spider bite sans the vomiting and muscle tremors of course.
Wikipedia stated that the lowly black widow actually gets a bad rap and that most “bad” insect bites get misdiagnosed as a spider bite. The fact is if you don’t do anything in the first 24-hours (meaning running full speed to the local emergency room), most bites can not be correctly identified. The Internet entry also cautioned that folk (home) remedies rarely work but the meat tenderizer remedy did sound tasty!
Never-the-less I had a remedy that alway seemed to work when I had a severe case of the itches. Just one word: B-L-E-A-C-H. Yep, household Clorox always does the trick. Michele headed to the laundry room while I held my arm over the sink. She poured a good four or five ounces on my arm and I screamed so loud you could probably hear it in Denali National Park but do you know what? The treatment worked? I slept through the night without an itch and it seems to be doing okay.
Hey a steak sure does sound good and maybe I can order that movie on Netflix. Its been years since I have seen it.
August 24, 2010
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Robert Forto | Team Ineka | Alaska Dog Works | Mushing Radio | Dog Doctor Radio | Denver Dog Works
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Dr. Robert Forto is a musher training for his first Iditarod under the Team Ineka banner and the host of the popular radio shows, Mush! You Huskies and The Dog Doctor Radio Show
