We need some advice. We are residing in an area where one can find numerous kinds of dangerous snakes and spiders. We found 2 violin spiders tonight outside the house, and need to fumigate. We never did this until now because the need did not arise. The violin spider is very dangerous, I added information below. We have to fumigate, can anyone give us any advice on this as we are so concerned that it could harm our gliders. We decided not to fumigate inside the house, only outside, and we will take the boys away. But what if the poison stays in the soil.

Any advice please?




Some interesting information:

The violin spider is represented by two genera in South Africa, Loxosceles and Sicarius. Loxosceles, the violin spider, is the most common occurring through most of South Africa. This spider, as well as the long-legged sac spider, Cheiracanthium, is responsible for all the serious cytotoxic spider bites in South Africa. Sicarius, the six-eyed sand/crab spider, is less commonly encountered as it occurs in the sand in the more arid western half of southern Africa. Both are harmful to people with Loxosceles bites resulting in ulcerating lesions while tissue damage from a bite by Sicarius is far more extensive and severe, sometimes resulting in death

Vereeniging, South Africa - A woman has died, three years after she was bitten by a spider, presumably a Violin Spider (Loxosceles sp). The bite had caused her legs to become infected and disfigured.

Andrea Joubert, 59, was admitted to the Vereeniging Medi-Clinic two months ago after spending thousands of rands on treatment for a Violin Spider bite.

She died on Tuesday morning after an illness of three months.

Joubert was presumably bitten by a Violin Spider hiding under the thatched braai area (lapa) at the house.

The tiny red mark, which at first looked like a mosquito bite, later became a wound on her right leg that penetrated all the layers of the skin. She and her husband Eben, 63, tried everything to find a cure for the bite wound, which kept growing larger.

I would discuss the residual effects of the pesticide with the company that is doing the fumigating.

To be safe I would change clothes and shoes and wash hands well before going into the house that your gliders hang out in.

You don't want to bring anything into their immediate environment from the outside. If you follow bio-security protocols as far as your clothes and shoes you should be fairly safe from keeping your gliders from coming in contact with the pesticide.

Your pest control person should have more information for you also.

Good luck getting rid of those nasty spiders. I am sure glad we don't have them here.

Thank you for the reply. I will take it up with the pest control company. Another concern is when my doggies go in and out of the house.

Also, there are 'pet safe' pesticides. I know suggies are extra sensitive but they do make some that are safe for dogs and cats and even birds. So I would also ask what pesticides the spiders are killed by, because there are alot of different kinds of pesticides that use different active chemicals and some are alot worse than others. I'm not discouraging your use of caution, just mentioning another thing that could be brought up to your pest company.

Well I received the precaution document and thought I'd post it for others to learn from this also.

Precautions to follow when treatment of garden and house accurs

Inside House:

All persons as well as all household pets to evacuate the house for at least a period of 4 hours or until all poison chemicals has dried up in full.
All opened food to be sealed and packed away.
All pet foods inside house to be put away and water to be through out.
All daily used cutlery and plates to be rinsed before use after treatment.
Toilet paper in toilet must be rolled off for the first 2 diameters of the roll in use and through away.
After treatment only workplaces must be wiped off.

Chemicals in use:

BASF-Fendona six
Active ingredient – pyrethroid ------- 60g/l


Gardens and around house:

No persons or any animals allowed bear feet after treatment for at least 4 hour or until all chemicals has dried up.
All animals and pests outside must be put away for at least 4 hours or until chemicals has dried up.
All food of pets and animals outside need to be put away on a safe place where chemicals are sprayed, water needs to be through out, fish ponds must be covered if in garden.
Gardens can only be watered a day after treatment were done.

Chemicals in use:

ARYSTA - Crusader
Active ingredient – Chlorpirifos - Metiel------ 20g/l
Chlorpirifos ------- 480g/l

Do you have a name of the "pet safe" pesticides? If I can suggest something safer it would be great.

That sounds like the "kills everything maybe even people" one, LOL
I agree with the earlier post about treating the suggie room as a if your coming in from a bio hazard area for awhile.
I hope you never have to see a violin spider again! How scary


(The people part was a joke...kinda )

I do not know the name, however I have a customer that comes in daily where I work who is a 'bug guy', so he does this for a living. I've actually asked him about spraying around outside of my house and he swears there are pet safe pesticides as alot of people request it and it is my biggest concern.

However I think how the pet safe ones work is that the bug actually has to walk through whereever the pesticide was applied and then it dies eventually. It doesn't ward off bugs per say, just kills them after they touch the chemical. They designed it that way so if they spray apartments all the bugs don't just run off to another apartment and for situations like that.
But there may be others that are not like that.
I would imagine they are using the 'doozie' pesticide because you REALLY don't want that spider anywhere around for how much damage it can cause.

I will ask him on Thursday when I go to work as tomorrow is my day off. He should be able to tell me something even if his company doesn't use it. Sometimes for people who have special requests they can even special order certain types of things.

Even if a pesticide was considered pet safe I would still use some kind of caution, taking shoes off while in the house, washing hands, changing clothes.

I personally have never gotten my house sprayed because I have a parrot and I feel that he would be the one who was sensitive to it, even more so than the suggs. But if I was in your situation I would be doing the same thing as you! What a incredible tiny creature to be able to do that to flesh...but I don't want it by my house!!! lol

But I'll ask. When are you getting fumigated?

Thank you for all that info! I would appreciate it if you ask that guy. I won't fumigate until I am happy and done with my research. But I know I need to.

We are thinking of going away for a day or two just to be extra safe.

Yes, we don't want to take any chances. But with those type of spiders around we really have no choice.

From Wikipedia entry on Pyrethroid:













From Pyrethroid Insecticides

Thank you for all the replies and ideas! I will do the mothball thing in the meantime for sure!

I agree. Yes. We will try placing mothballs around the house. Go buy some gizmogirl! ;-)

do you put the mothballs outside around the foundation or inside?

I picked up some mothballs today. Hopefully it will keep the spiders away from my house.