Posted on 08/06/2006 7:50:35 PM PDT by Marius3188
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- An eight-legged invasion is giving some Austrians the creeps.
The venomous yellow sack spider, whose painful bite can cause headache and nausea, has become the talk of the country since several people were bitten earlier this summer.
Reports of spider sightings have dominated the local news, triggering hundreds of calls to a Vienna poison hot line and prompting the government to plead for calm.
"The bites of a yellow sack spider are indeed painful but not deadly," Health Minister Maria Rauch-Kallat said in a statement. "If you are bitten, please don't panic and in case of discomfort immediately contact a doctor."
In a sign of the hysteria, 190 people went to a hospital Wednesday in the northwestern city of Linz fearing they had been bitten. Only eight of them had the right symptoms, doctors told Austrian state broadcaster ORF.
Eva Reiner, a Vienna business consultant, fished a dead yellow sack spider out of her pool this week -- and hasn't gone swimming since.
"It wasn't even alive, and it still looked evil to me," she said.
Experts are urging people to keep their perspective.
The yellow and brown striped critter -- Cheiracanthium punctorium in Latin -- is one of 1,000 similar species found in Austria and neighboring countries, said Christian Komposch of an animal ecology institute in the southern city of Graz.
There are sightings every year, said Komposch, who accused the news media of spreading misleading information and fanning the frenzy.
"We had a scorpion in the house this morning - yikes. Hubby swept him up and flushed him."
Don't they clog up the pipes? I thought the critters were kinda big.
Many years ago when I took geology in college the professor was always careful to place a rock hammer or other object of known size in any slide he took so the audience would know the real size of the formation that had been photographed. It definitely pays to to the same thing when photographing insects or arachnids.
I had no choice on the photos 'cause I didn't take the pictures...I just referenced their URLs.
Not here - the biggest ones I've seen in this area are about 1" - 1 1/2" long - cricket size, basically.
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