By Paul Fattig

CENTRAL POINT -- Jessica Hanson got a bit of a shock when she started to plug an electric cord into a socket behind the couch.

A large spider that could have starred in the thriller "Arachnophobia" was lurking in the shadows.

"It looked nasty," Hanson said. "This was a big brown spider with a fiddle mark on its back.

"I have no problems with spiders as long as they're not poisonous," she added. "But poisonous spiders bug me."

Suspecting the arachnid might be poisonous, she took it to the Oregon State University Extension Service. She had a reason to be bugged: The spider turned out to be a brown recluse, a venomous arachnid seldom seen in the Pacific Northwest.

A brown recluse hasn't been identified in the region since one was found in Prosser, Wash., in 1978, according to a Washington State University Extension Service handout on spiders. The article noted the spider was traced to household goods brought into the area from Kansas, one of the northernmost states where the spider is now established. It originates in western South America.

The spider found in the Central Point home apparently came from Kansas as well -- in a radio that the Hanson family received by mail from a company there early last month, said Marsha Waite, a master gardener in charge of the plant clinic at the extension service office in Central Point.

Experts stress that spiders are beneficial critters that prey on insects, but a few, like the brown recluse, can also pose a danger to humans.

Waite initially identified Hanson's spider as a brown recluse. However, she also sent the spider to the OSU Extension Entomology Insect Clinic in Corvallis, where insect identification specialist Lynn Royce confirmed her finding.

The spider's overall size, including legs, was about an inch in diameter. In addition to the dark violin pattern and brown to tan color, the brown recluse has three pairs of eyes instead of four like most spiders.

Although a brown recluse is periodically reported in the Northwest, one hasn't been documented since the Prosser spider, Royce said.

"We just don't see them here very often," Royce said. "People will go to a doctor with a bite and the doctor will say that it's from a brown recluse, but 99.9 percent of the time it's something else."

That something else is often an aggressive house spider, otherwise known as a hobo spider, which is native to the region, experts said.

"A hobo bite is similar to that of a brown recluse," Royce said. "But, unless you have an ulcerated sore, the bite is probably from something else."

Bites from either spider can result in lesions, under which the tissue often dies and sloughs off. Another symptom is a headache that doesn't respond to aspirin and that may last several days.

Hobo spider bites have not been known to cause deaths, but anyone bitten should seek medical attention immediately, according to the extension service.

Although hobo spiders are native to the area, they are not very common, Royce said.

A more common poisonous spider in the region is the western black widow, which has a bright red hourglass figure on its belly. But arachnid experts say the black widow is shy and reluctant to bite.

Black widow bites are rarely fatal, although young, old and infirm people are more at risk from the bites than most adults, experts said. In extreme cases, symptoms can include severe pain throughout the body, nausea, perspiration, leg cramps, tremors, loss of muscle tone, high blood pressure or vomiting.

Don't look for the brown recluse to become commonplace in the Northwest, Royce said. It is still very rare here even though materials come into the region from southern states where they are now established, she said.

"We have so much movement of household goods and other things but we still don't see them very often," she said, noting they don't seem to thrive in the region for a variety of reasons.

"We don't want them (brown recluse spiders) to become a problem here so we want people to know what they look like," Waite said. "Their bites leave terrible scars."

Non-native poisonous spiders could establish a foothold, she believes.

After Hanson brought in the spider and it had been determined it likely came from the radio, Waite asked Hanson and her husband, David, to check the radio for evidence that a spider had been there.

That's when they found spider webs and an egg sack, Waite said, noting that a brown recluse can produce up to 150 eggs.

"It looked like the eggs had hatched," said Waite, who inspected it with a microscope.

The Hansons, who have a young child, have since had their home fumigated.

The extension service urges anyone with a spider that looks unusual to contact the local office at 776-7371.

"They should bring the spiders in and have them identified," Waite said. "It is better to be safe than sorry."