February 26, 2021

Mediterranean Recluse Spiders have been found in the University Of Michigan's Shapiro Undergraduate Library.  Because where else would you expect to find recluse spiders on a college campus? Hell, they were in a "nonpublic" basement storage area.  I would say our spiders were exactly where we would expect them. 

The story can be found in the Detroit Free Press and, honestly, one doesn't know where to begin in terms of satire.  The headline and main thrust of the story is that U of M apologizes for closing the library when the little friends were discovered in the "nonpublic" space. I like to think the public can forgive that the university took the cautious route in closing the building when they discovered venomous spiders. 

On the other hand, splashed across the Free Press web page with this story (at least when I accessed it early on Friday, February 26) is an advertisement for the Grewal Law firm, who offers legal support "if you were assaulted by University of Michigan Dr. Robert Anderson," a rather more uncomfortable focus for the University.  One is reminded that the Free Press is only free in the most liberal of interpretations.

How did the recluses get discovered?  Not by falling into someone's hair.  Not by crawling out of a shower drain pipe. Not even by finding one in a shoe.  No, seems one of them got stuck in a glue trap!  What an ignoble way to be discovered.  Stuck, unable to move, like a common mouse. How reclusive was he if he was caught on a glue trap? I am confused as in the article an expert states that these spiders are "cosmopolitan." I suppose it is my own ignorance to think reclusiveness and cosmopolitan are mutually exclusive. 

Somewhere there are flies celebrating the poetic justice here. 

In the end the one caught, a male, a couple of females and a few "juveniles" were all sent to an expert. Luckily, U of M has an internal expert who could identify the little rascals, the chair of biology at the University of Michigan--Dearborn Campus, a little victory (metaphorically and literally) for those faculty who sit downstream from the flagship campus at any large state university.  The chair's specialty is Spider Biology, a niche field certainly very important but likely now that the spotlight of the free press has been cast on it to be pronounced as unnecessary by conservative politicians arguing that spider biology will not lead to actual careers. One also can't help but imagine Professor Crawley from The Big Bang Theory when the question was posed as to whether the spiders were Mediterranean or Brown Recluse Spiders: "When I tell you that's a Mediterranean Recluse Spider, you can take that to the damn bank!"

How is our expert able to tell? By the genitalia which distinguishes the two spiders. I really don't want to go there. Is the Mediterranean's circumcised? I mean, good God, the article refers to them as the "Shapiro Spiders!"

In the end, the university "treated" the Undergraduate Library, which our intrepid reporter for The Free Press, tells us is "affectionately known as the UGLi on campus," for spiders so that it could reopen. You hope the student newspaper goes with the "UGLi Treated For Spider Veins: More Signs Of A Culture Obsessed By Looks."

Of course, the real icing on the cake here is that these little arachnids ended up in Michigan, the home of one of Michigan's most famous actors, Jeff Daniels, famous for being the lead in Arachnophobia, born in Chelsea, Michigan, not more than a day crawl from Ann Arbor for our eight-legged friends.

Ultimately, the little guys didn't pose much of a risk, as "reports of deaths from spider bites tend to be over-reported," which is why apparently closing the building was an over-reaction.  I don't know how you over-report spider bite deaths; I clearly don't have the right newspapers in my home for reading . . . or rolling up to crush bugs. That's o.k. I prefer the web.