Send Salt Lake County sheriff's Sgt. Kendra Herlin down a dark alley after an ax murderer, and she'll go - just so long as there aren't any spiders in there.
"I hate them. I can't stand them," said Herlin, who has good cause for arachnophobia. A spider bite hospitalized her for two weeks in 1989. "Shoot me, please. Just no spiders."Sorry, Kendra.
According to Utah State University entomologists, Utahns may be spending more time swatting, stomping and flushing a particularly nasty arachnid of the kind that likely bit the deputy. Populations of the poisonous aggressive house spider, or hobo spider, appear to be on the upswing. So do reports of serious spider bites.
Alan Roe, insect diagnostician for Utah State University Extension Services, said he had received two specimens of the aggressive house spider in two years until this summer. In the past week, he's seen 14, including three on Thursday.
Roe even found one nesting in his USU research lab.
"We don't want to cause a panic," he said. "But at the same time, people need to know these spiders have been found."
And they are poisonous. In fact, Roe and others believe the hobo spider to be responsible for many, if not all, of the serious spider bites in Utah attributed to the infamous brown recluse spider.
Roe and other experts say that despite popular stories, there has never been a brown recluse specimen documented in the Beehive State.
Bites by the brown recluse and
hobo spider can be virtually indistinguishable, although the recluse can be more poisonous.
Both produce a necrotic toxin that destroys the flesh around the wound site and causes other symptoms including nausea, fever, stiffness and lethargy. Bites are rarely fatal, but deaths have occurred in children, the elderly and people with allergic reactions.
The spiders, however, differ in other regards.
The hobo spider is larger and faster. And the recluse, in keeping with its name, lives a hermit's life and is most often found hiding in cool, dark places.
The aggressive house spider is just that: an aggressive house spider. It is a funnel-web spinner that often nests in homes and, according to Washington State University entomologist Dr. Roger D. Akre, is a fierce fighter.
"They are just an incredible predator," said Akre, a noted expert on the species. "And they are bloody all over Salt Lake City."
While Roe believes spider populations are growing due to the cool, wet summer and the availability of other insects, Akre doesn't buy it. The aggressive house spider, he said, is merely killing all the competition.
"They're just an incredible competitor," he said. "They just take other spiders out of the area."
Along with the increase in specimens of the hobo spider has come a jump in the number of reported spider bites, although few have actually been confirmed.
Barbara Vuignier, director of the Poison Control Center at University Hospital, said bite calls were up last year and have continued to escalate. Of 25,000 poisoning calls in 1992, 348 involved spiders. She suspects the center has already taken at least that number this year.
She attributes the increase partly to recent articles in national magazines about a Bountiful woman who claimed to be the victim of a brown recluse bite.
Roe suspects the articles have heightened awareness and may account for some of the spider specimens he's getting.
A victim rarely sees the spider that bites him, whether it's a recluse or hobo. Herlin is an example.
The deputy's encounter occurred during a narcotics sting operation in a grungy central Salt Lake duplex. A pimple-like sore on her chin within a couple of days turned into a disfiguring and excruciating ulcer the size of a quarter.
Swelling made it impossible for her to close her mouth and doctors ultimately had to cut away sloughing skin and perform reconstructive surgery.
"It was one of those deals where I was in so much pain I was afraid I was going to live," she said. "This all happened right about the time the movie ("Arachnophobia") came out.
"Needless to say, I never saw it."