Here's something most people don't want to know: Every spider in Fort Smith, AR is venomous.
That's right. In fact, no matter where you are in the world, every single spider you've ever seen or ever will see injects venom when it bites. But there's a huge silver lining to this cloud. Except for a handful of species, no spider ever injects enough venom to do the slightest bit of harm to a human.
As you probably know, the vast majority of spiders use their webs to catch insects, which they eat later, although while the bug is still alive. The venom that spiders deliver with their bites is usually just toxic enough to paralyze their prey.
So naturally, if a spider's venom is powerful enough to just temporarily subdue a mosquito or a housefly, there's no chance at all the venom will cause any problems for a person. It may hurt, just like a horsefly bite or even a bee sting, but there's nothing more to worry about beyond that.
Well, in most cases there's nothing more.
Arkansas is home to over 500 species of spiders, and there are only two that can cause significant damage: The black widow and the brown recluse. Most people are familiar with these two spiders, but in case you aren't, you can recognize a black widow by its eponymous color and the red hourglass shape on its underbelly. Brown recluse spiders are likewise brown and their size, including both the body and the leg span, is usually no larger than a quarter. Sometimes they are marked with a darker brown fiddle shape on their back, but they aren't always; in fact, some of the brown recluse's cousins that aren't dangerous to humans also have the fiddle markings.
Black widows are usually a bit smaller than the brown recluse, but their venom is 15 times more powerful than a rattlesnake's. The hourglass-marked spider, however, is not physically able to inject nearly as much venom as a poisonous snake, so fatalities from black widow bites are extremely rare.
What's more, black widows are not particularly aggressive, and most bites result from spiders who have found their way into shoes or clothing that a person puts on later. Their bites, however, are very painful and can cause nausea, fever, and muscle cramping around the site of the bite and particularly in the abdomen and back.
Brown recluse bites, on the other hand, aren't very painful; many victims recount that they never even felt the bite. The pain hits up to three hours or so later, which comes with a blister-like wound and intense pain at the site of the bite.
