Spider Woman

a reporter at lARgE spider woman Hunting venomous species in the basements of Los Angeles. bY buRKHARd BilgER arly one morning last year, when the of the brown recluse, but larger and lady! Spider lady! Come to the front!” streets of downtown Los Angeles more venomous. Sometime in the late Torres was standing by the cash register, wereE still mostly deserted, a strange figure nineteen-sixties, apparently, their ances- her hands on her hips. She made Binford appeared in the Goodwill store at 235 tors had ridden to California in costume scrawl out a waiver on a legal pad, then led South Broadway, next door to the Gua- crates owned by a troupe of Shakespear- her down a long, dingy hallway to the dalupe Wedding Chapel. She had on ten- ean actors from Brazil. A year or two basement door. “It’s your own risk,” she nis shoes, dungarees, and a faded blue later, they were discovered at a theatre said, pointing down the stairwell. “If I T-shirt, and was outfitted as if for a safari in the L.A. suburb of Sierra Madre don’t hear from you in two days, I call the or a spelunking expedition. A khaki vest and promptly triggered a citywide panic. authorities.” was stuffed with empty plastic vials; a “50 DeadlY SpideRS FOUND,” a front- black duffelbag across her shoulders held page headline in the Los Angeles Times piders have a bad reputation, largely a pair of high-tech headlamps, a digital announced on June 7, 1969. “VENom undeserved. The great majority aren’t camera, and a venom extractor. She made LIKE RattlesNAKE’S.” In Sierra Madre, venomousS enough to harm us, or their her way to the front desk, past a rack of spider suspects were rushed to the police fangs are too small, or their jaw muscles summer dresses on sale for six dollars and in jam jars, ice-cream boxes, and Styro- are too puny, or they simply see no profit ninety-nine cents. Then she introduced foam cups. “Some have shown up around in attacking large, indigestible creatures herself to the store manager, Gina Torres, 3 A.M. in the trembling hands of frantic that can crush them with their toes. Un- a statuesque woman with silver-blond householders,” the Times reported. By like snake venom, which is designed to hair and thickly drawn eyeliner. She said August of that year, more than two hun- kill vertebrates, spider venom is almost that her name was Greta Binford and she dred laeta—as well as a thousand of always meant for insects. Its toxins can wanted to hunt spiders in the basement. their molted skins—had been found stop a hornet in mid-flight, but they lack Torres stared at her. Binford is small across Los Angeles. One family of eight proper targets in the human nervous sys- and keen-eyed, with a dark-brown bob abandoned their home at the sight of a tem. “If we were wired for spider venoms and a scattering of freckles across her single spider. the way insects are, we would be screwed,” nose. Her voice has a quick, clear, almost The Great Spider Hunt of 1969 ended Binford says. chirping quality, and at forty-one she as such scares usually do: attics were Still, some spiders can kill you, and carries herself with the springy assur- cleared, toolsheds swept clean, buildings they’re the ones that interest Binford. She ance of a high-school cheerleader. She fumigated and declared safe. Yet the spi- has spent the past ten years collecting ven- didn’t look like a crackpot to Torres. ders remained. Buildings like the Good- omous species worldwide, raising them in Then again, she didn’t look like a spider will store had basements and sub-base- her lab, and patiently milking their fangs. hunter, either. Perhaps she was a health ments so deep and interconnected that no A single spider can inject its victims with inspector. “I’ve never heard anything pesticide could reach into every hiding as many as two hundred compounds: pro- about you,” Torres said, her eyes narrow- place. “I showed one of the spiders to an teases that dissolve flesh, gelatinases that ing. “I’ve been here two years, and I’ve employee the last time I was here,” Bin- dissolve connective tissues, neurotoxins never seen you before.” ford told me. “And she said, ‘Yeah, I see that short-circuit nerves, slow the heart, Binford explained to Torres that she those in the bathroom all the time.’ ” No and freeze the limbs. A spider’s venom was a professor of biology at Lewis & bites had been reported, but word seemed offers a window onto its evolution, Bin- Clark College, in Portland, Oregon. She to have got out that something was not ford says—a chemical record of its most specialized in arachnology and was on a quite right in the basement. Torres told successful experiments at killing prey. It’s weeklong spider-hunting trip through the Binford that no one was allowed down- also a storehouse of potential pharmaceu- Southwest. She’d been to this store be- stairs, for reasons of liability. “You have to ticals, one that remains virtually untapped. fore, years ago, to collect an interesting understand,” she said. “I have to protect “There aren’t any spiders for which we species that lived in the basement. “I just myself.” know all the chemicals in their venom,” need an hour or so to get a few more spec- Binford spent the next hour on her cell she says. “None.” imens,” Binford said. What she didn’t say phone, pleading her case with Goodwill In the United States, two groups of was that they were among the deadliest executives. She was thumbing through a spiders are widely considered dangerous: spiders in the world. rack of used Hawaiian shirts, awaiting the black widows and brown recluses, along They belonged to a South American management’s verdict, when an irritated with their close relatives. Widows are species called Loxosceles laeta—a cousin voice blared over the intercom, “Spider small creatures, potbellied and delicately BANYAI ISTVAN 66 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 5, 2007 TNY—2007_03_05—PAGE 66—133SC. Greta Binford didn’t tell the store manager that the spiders downstairs were among the deadliest in the world. TNY—2007_03_05—PAGE 67—133SC.—lIVE ART R15983_RD—PLease PULL KOdaK appROvaL PROOF FOR PRess COLOR GUidance articulated, often with a red or yellow hard to distinguish from herpes, cellulitis, gans—bulbous or bifurcated, barbed or hourglass on the abdomen. They can be flesh-eating staph, and half a dozen other smooth—is sometimes the only clue to found in cellars, garages, and woodpiles severe infections. (In 2001, two cases of its species.) Then she went to find Louis in every state, and seem to be fond of anthrax poisoning in New York were Sorkin, the assistant to the curator of spi- filth. (They’re notorious for biting the initially blamed on recluses.) Perhaps to ders. Sorkin is usually called in to inves- pendulous parts of outhouse visitors.) keep the toxins from spreading, the body tigate the city’s infestations, and Binford The recluse and other Loxosceles species walls off the arteries and veins around the suspected that the museum might have prefer warm, dry country. They’re com- bite. The skin, starved of blood, begins to a few trespassers of its own. Spiders often mon in the Southwest and the Midwest die, turning black and sloughing off, leav- crawl into crates and cabinets and get sent but can range as far east as Georgia. In ing an open wound that can take months around the world with travelling exhib- Oklahoma, where I grew up, my mother to heal. Bite victims sometimes look as if its, she said. Over the years, she had found sometimes found them in our bedsheets— they’ve had serious burns. Some go into Loxosceles in the basements of the Argen- their legs long and nearly translucent, shock. A rare few suffer hemolysis: their tine Museum of Natural Sciences and their bodies a pale umber, with a violin- red blood cells begin to burst, poisoning the Indiana Statehouse. shaped mark on the head. We called them the kidneys and slowly depriving the Sorkin, a short bald man with bushy fiddlebacks. body of oxygen. Although an antivenom eyebrows and a rolling, stumpy gait, I was never bitten by a fiddleback, but for recluse bites has recently been devel- handed us a pair of flashlights and took a friend of mine named Jeanne Devlin oped, with Binford’s help, it has yet to be us down a service staircase. As we walked, swallowed a black widow one spring, approved in the United States. he told us about the bedbug colony that when it crawled into her juice glass on a he was raising in his office, mostly on his Girl Scout trip. It felt like a cocklebur in first met Binford at the American own blood—“I like to put them on me her throat, she told me recently, and bit Museum of Natural History, in New and watch them feed”—and about a din- her at least once before she coughed it YIork. She was planning her trip through ner hosted by the local Explorers Club. up. Black-widow venom is a cocktail of the Southwest to gather fresh venom for The menu included tempura-battered neurotoxins. It targets the muscles and her research, and she wanted to spend tarantulas, he said, but the cooks had ne- nerves, causing cramps and spasms, fever, time in the museum first, studying the glected to clean them properly.

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