We as gardeners are more at risk for bites and stings from venomous critters than most folks. We move leaf litter that might hide a copperhead snake, reach in the shadows where a black widow spider might lurk and are around bees and wasps a lot. This is not to say we should be afraid, but we should be alert and prepared.

Learn To Identify Poisonous Snakes

The alert park is important. Watch where you are putting your hands and feet. Make sure nothing else is using that space before you enter it. There are only four poisonous snakes in the United States: rattlesnakes, copperheads, water moccasins, and coral snakes. A few states, such as Florida, may have breeding populations of cobras, but most people do not have to worry about those.

Learn what poisonous snakes look like. Leave other snakes alone. If bothered, they will bite, and it hurts, but it won’t kill you. My Dad took my sister and me to the Dallas Zoo and taught us to recognize poisonous snakes when he could not break me from picking snakes up to look at them. Now you can look on the internet and learn about them there.

Identifying Poisonous Spiders

Just as most snakes are beneficial, so are most spiders. There are only two, the brown recluse, or violin spider, and the black widow spider, that are poisonous to people. There is a tarantula in Arizona that is venomous, too, but otherwise, the spider hurts when it bites but won’t kill you.  Mature female black widow spiders are shiny black and most have a  red triangle on the bottom of their abdomen.  Fuzzy black spiders are not poisonous. Black and white spiders are not poisonous, either. Leave them alone, they catch bugs.

Stinging Insects

Most of us go to a lot of trouble to attract bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. Bees operate under the “don’t bother me and I won’t bother you” rule most of the time. Wasps are a different story. They will sting you if you come close to the nest, to them, or just for grins. They are the only thing that I poison on sight at my house. If they are out in the pasture, I leave them alone, but near me, they go.

This leads to the prepared part of gardening. I am allergic to wasps and travel with an epi-pen. If you know you are allergic to ants, bees, wasps, or whatever, make sure you have your medicine with you. Attacks occur unpredictably, and you don’t want to keel over before you reach your medicine.

Keep Poison Control Number Handy

Be sure you know the number for poison control in your state. In Texas, they have magnets and phone stickers for free they will send you. They also have a brochure on bites and stings and on poisonous plants. They have other information as well. You have to be a Texas resident to get the stuff I mentioned, but there is a lot of information on their website for everyone. There should be an equivalent place in your state. 

Gardening is a safe and enjoyable pastime. A few precautions such as those mentioned here make it that much safer and more enjoyable.

Want to learn to garden? My first attempt at gardening ended up in failure. The weeds took over and squeezed the vegetables out. I was very frustrated by this waste of good seed, time, and money. So I became a master gardener and spent a lot of time helping other people avoid or overcome problems in their garden. 

In order to help others garden successfully, I have written a book, Vegetable Gardening from the Ground Up, available in an ebook or a paperback from Amazon. It is also in Kindle Unlimited.