Spiders are insanely creepy. Even if you personally aren’t afraid of them you cannot deny that their multiple eyes, eight legs, pinchers, and eerie way of moving is rather disturbing. Arachnophobia is even rated as one of the top 10 phobias in the world… so it is, at the very least, incredibly unsettling to find these high-legged, multi-eyed arachnids crawling around your own home. While the extremely poisonous ones are relatively rare in this area of the United States, you still definitely don’t want to have a run in with the two that are found in Illinois: black widows and brown recluse.

Female black widows have very strong fangs and are easily able to stab through human skin to inject venom into their victims. This venom contains a powerful neurotoxin that will begin radiating pain in the location of the wound before spreading to the chest, other limbs, abdomen or even the entire body. Depending on the amount of venom released, and the health of the individual bitten, these bites can cause extreme health complications and even death.

The elusive brown recluse prefers to remain hidden, and most encounters with them are accidental when picking up a box or toy, moving an old piece of furniture, etc. Their bites are very painful, although unlike the bite of the black widow, the pain is localized and accompanied by a stinging sensation. These bites originally develop into a blister before eventually splitting into a lesion and, in severe cases, can cause skin necrosis – destruction of the skin tissue.