OKLAHOMA CITY, Sept. 5 (UPI) -- People in Oklahoma are reporting seeing more venomous black widow spiders this summer than in recent years, authorities said.
Exterminators say calls about the spiders are increasing.
"The black widows have just exploded," Mark Lasater, an Edmond exterminator who has been getting a half-dozen calls a day, told The Oklahoman.
"Different insects will cycle every year in numbers," Lasater said. "Why the black widow this year, I don't know."
One possibility is that a drop in other insect species because of heat and drought has the black widows weaving their webs closer to homes and well-watered lawns in their search for food, Tom Royer, an entomologist at Oklahoma State University, said.
The Oklahoma Poison Control Center said it has taken 40 calls about black widow bites this year, compared with 22 last year.
"We don't know about the numbers of black widows out there, but we deal with the end product," Managing Director Scott Schaeffer said.
While a black widow bite rarely is fatal, young children and older adults can experience major or life-threatening reactions to a bite, which can cause "extraordinary pain," he said.
