Author: Gray Wolf
“Nature creates nothing, without a purpose.” ~ Aristotle “Where your fear is, there your task is.” ~ Carl Jung That’s right, spiders on the inside. They are two kind of poisonous spiders in Georgia with fangs to inject their tissue-destroying venom. They like to come out of closets and dark crevices late at night, then bite you while unaware and under the cover of darkness. The Brown Recluse and Black Widows are the most poisonous and both are numerous in Georgia prisons. Both have the potential to kill a man, but I’ve yet to hear of anyone dying from a spider bite. Their necrotic venom injects a toxin that break down blood and tissue cells into a watery type jelly, or soup for consumption. There are more than 38 known species of spiders in Georgia. The harmless wolf spider, a.k.a. “jumping spiders”, are everywhere and love to multiply in cell windows where it’s warm and small insects are readily available. “Fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.” ~ Dale Carnegie. In prison the brown recluse spider loves to live and breed in the locked pipe chases between the cells. Around the plumbing pipes of toilets and sink fixtures where they thrive in secured seclusion. Then venturing out unseen late at night, to crawl under locked cell doors and up unto you bunk with you while you sleep. Silent, creepy-crawlies in the night, to shock you into a rude awakening of having something unseen to bite hell out of you, then disappear… Bitten on my left index finger in 2001 while asleep late at night, it was a shocking revelation. Living in the B-3 dorm, in regular population at Georgia State Prison, I’d never saw what it was that had bitten me. But, I sure as hell felt it! Awakened immediately, by a burning, stinging sensation similar to that of a wasp sting, or that of a mean fire ant. I immediately knew that the bite was more serious than that of the frequent mosquito’s who fed all night long on any accessible skin left uncovered. Rudely awoken and slapping at the wound to kill whatever had bitten or stung me. If I’d killed it or not I do not know… If so, it has been smashed to smithereens… Brown recluse spider bites were so frequent at GSP that medical knew exactly what has caused it, and what was required. “Everyone you meet knows something you don’t know but need to know. Learn from them.” ~ Carl Jung. The next morning I had a mean red streak clearly visible from the bite on my index finger. Following the red vein it extending all the way up my forearm and past my elbow. Continuing across my bicept, the red streak then disappeared into my left arm pit. A scary red streak that could not be ignored. Luckily I was assigned to the paint detail at the time and was reconized by most of the officers. The officer assigned allowed me to leave the locked dormitory when I asked. Immediately I headed straight to the hospital floor… At medical they inserted an I.V. tube into the vein on the back of my left hand and started a mix of anti-venom and antibiotics. Allowing the I.V. to stay taped in place, medical then let me leave and go to work afterwards. With the I.V. tube still inserted into the back of my hand, I had to go back and forth to medical twice daily for the next four days to have more of the same intravenous injections. The wound eventually healed without problems. But instead of a depression, it left a raised purplish spot where the spider’s venom had been injected. Two years after that incident, I was bitten on the outside of my right arm, just below the elbow. The scar remains visible to this day. Once again, I was asleep when bitten. Although, this time I was able to identify what had bitten me by the brown legs of the smashed remains of a brown recluse that I’d swatted with the palm of my left hand. At the site where the necrotic venom had been injected it immediately turned a bluish-purple in color as it started to desolve the flesh into jelly. Within a day it had left a squishy-soft, purplish spot the size and diameter of my index fingertip. Within the fourth day I had a quarter inch deep hole where it’s tissue-destroying necrotic venom had rotted away the flesh (necrosis) at the site where the spider’s fangs had injection it’s venom. I could literally insert my whole fingertip into the hole, deep enough to cover half of the finger nail on my left hand’s index finger. Keeping the open wound cleaned out with alcohol prep pads and leaving the wound open to heal from the inside out, I never sought medical treatment for that one because I knew what it was that had bitten me. “If it’s endurable, then endure it. Stop complaining.” ~ Marcus Aurelius. I chose to save myself the $15.00-$20.00 medical charge for something I could treat myself. I kept Doxycycline antibiotics pills and cream, plus necessary cotton gauze, tape, and bandages on hand that I’d bought from others to save for just such occasions. That is, if I could keep the damn police from “confiscating” it as “contraband” during all the inspections and shakedowns. My own personalized “medicine bag” also included a bottle of pure, uncut bleach for staff, fungus, and athlete’s foot infections. And Salt. Warm salt water solution for snorting up my nostrils to burn out and cleanse my sinus cavities and throat of infection whenever a cold would begin to try and take hold. “An ounce of prevention…” Ever since 1996 a standard $5.00 is charged by GDC for sick calls, and a separate $5.00 charge each for any and all medications issued. Usually it’s for antibiotics, cream, Band-Aids, and the all purpose panacea for everything; Ibuprofin for pain. Looks good on paper and proves you’ve received treatment. Twenty dollars is a months worth of coffee for a poor prisoner who’s not given coffee, and not paid by the state of Georgia for working. Having to depend on the charity and donations of friends and family. That is; If there’s anyone left on the outside who is still alive to remember or care for you after decades of separation in prison. “Men fight their darkest battles on their own because they know that no one else cares.” ~ Unknown. “I am forgotten like a dead man, out of mind.” ~ Psalm 31:12. The largest brown recluse I’d ever seen was in a high max lockdown cell at Georgia State Prison in 2003. While doing time in the special management unit (SMU) in K-Bldg. I was moved into a cell that a black man had lived in for several years. The brown recluse is a hunter spider, and nothing makes a home more attractive than lots of food. Undoubtedly, he had never opened the cell window before, even though it had a screen cover on the outside. A brown recluse had lain locked-up inside the window for who knows how long, eating the small insects until it had grown so large that it was trapped inside. Late that fist night after moving into the cell I’d turned the knob, rotating the vent lever so as to allow fresh air to come inside. Afterwards I’d laid back down in my bunk. Relaxed and comfortably watching TV in the dim light, some thirty minutes or so later I saw something slip through one of the 1/2 inch wide X 2 inch long vent slots and fall unto the floor! It looked like a miniature tarantula and was at least the diameter of a silver U.S. half dollar in size. I jumped up immediately in the dark and smashed him with my heavy duty flip-flop shower shoe. Later wishing that I’d had the presence of mind to scoop him up in a empty coffee jar instead. What a pet he’d made in lockdown! He was unusual and shockingly huge! “God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.” ~ Voltaire. The second largest I ever saw was at Macon State Prison in 2021. While waiting in a halfway for the instructor to arrive and open the classroom door to a technical college class early one morning, a brown recluse came out from under a mop closet door and came stalking down the hallway right towards where I was sitting. He was bigger than a quarter dollar coin in diameter and frightful to look at while brazenly marching speedily up to me in the daylight. I guess you know what happened to him… There are often hundreds of brown recluse spiders residing within a single area. No more did I sit on the hallway floor while waiting! The Black Widow Spider, whose venom is said to be 15 times stronger than that of a rattle snake’s venom according to National Geographic, were really bad at Phillips State Prison near Atlanta, Georgia. I was especially careful around them, and have never been bitten by a black widow spider before, that I’m aware of… They are not aggressive unless pressed into defending themselves. Unlike the aggressive brown recluse, if you leave a black widow alone they will leave you alone. They usually stayed, but not always, on the outside of buildings, and not so much on the inside. And unlike a brown recluse which would venture and roam all over in search of pray, it was unusual to find a black widow spider away from its web.”The spider skillfully grasp with its hands, and lives in kings’ palaces.”~ Proverbs 30:28. During the summer months, in the crevices and recesses of brick and mortar walls, you’d find a web with a round, dirty brown silk ball of eggs. Or a web with an empty silk ball and hundreds of tiny hatchlings crawling all over the web. Nearby, watching and protecting her brood, you can be sure that there was a black widow spider lurking. Jet black in color with it’s signature bright red hour glass on the bottom of her fat round abdomen. During exercise periods on the yards outside of each building you had to be especially careful of where you sat. Behind nearly every drain pipe and covered crevice, out of direct sunlight, there was a black widow spider. Any recess big enough where a spider might withdraw itself into, there was a pretty good chance there was a black widow spider hiding in there. If you saw any sigh of a web, be it old or new, then you knew form sure it was a trouble spot and not to sit around or play with it. Human ingenuity will never devise any invention more successful, nor more simple, nor more to the purpose than nature does; because in her inventions nothing is wanting, and nothing is superfluous… Just examine the magnificent flying abilities of a dragonfly!!! Uncompareble and utterly amazing!!! “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” ~ William Shakespeare “We are men. We don’t lose hope in hard times. We get stronger in that shit.” ~ Mike Tyson “Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise your name; the righteous shall surround me, for you shall deal bountifully with me.” ~ Psalm 142:7