Infested!: The Nastiest Battles
6/7/12, 4:00 – 5:00 p.m.
Animal Planet
Just five minutes into this special on Animal Planet summarizing the worst infestations of this past season, and I cannot stop fidgeting and scratching myself. And for good reason: Infested! is not for the squeamish. Take the disclaimer at the beginning of the show, for example:
“These stories are based on events recounted by real victims and contain images that may be disturbing to some viewers.”
The show should also say, “When you finish watching, you’ll think that every black piece of lint on your carpet is an ant, and you’ll be up half the night wondering if you’ll get bitten by a spider or a bed bug.”
I haven’t ever watched the “regular” show, just this special, but I assume the format is similar: one or more families’ infestations are featured, graphic images and all. Just like on I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant, the show contains rather goofy reinactments which had the melodramatic tone of a Lifetime movie. The more interesting part of the show to me was when the actual victims — yes, I’ll call them that — gave their own testimonials.
Something that all of the following four families have in common is that they all thought they were moving into a wonderful home in an idyllic community. Each of the families had at least one child, which just makes things more difficult when you’re dealing with extermination as well as quelling kids’ fears about what’s going on in their home. Let’s get started, shall we? And remember … don’t read if you have a low tolerance for this kind of thing!
Tammy & Kevin – Terrebonne, Oregon (Hobo Spiders)
“They were so fast and agressive, it was getting scary.”
Shortly after Tammy, Kevin, and their son Jared move into their rental, they start seeing spiders in a few places downstairs. Killing them individually doesn’t work. Neither does a bug bomb. What is happening?
After awhile, the family notices that, instead of finding a variety of spiders, they all start looking like the same type of arachnid. An exterminator is brought in and they are determined to be Hobo spiders, one of the most venomous in the U.S. And, guess what? The only way to kill them off is one at a time with spray. And when you’ve got thousands of spiders making their home in the crawl space underneath your house, it has to be nearly impossible to kill them all.
After a spider makes its way to Jared’s bed and bites him in the middle of the night, he has to go through a course of antibiotics. And then Tammy gets bitten too. Her doctor said that it was one of the worst spider bites she had ever seen: “It looked like a big, red, hot abscess, probably about the size of a mango.” And it took Tammy over a month to recover.
Unfortunately, the only way for these guys to get relief is to fork up the rest of their rent money for the year, and get out. Yeah, I’d do the same thing. Thank god they didn’t own the house, like our next few families …
Clacked by Rachel Blum-Jose 
on Jun 07, 2012 @ 18:29 EST5EDT
Hobo spiders are found in US probably from the start of 20th century and at this time they can be found in many states of US including Oregon, Idaho and Nevada, Montana and Utah. I watched animal planet quite but unfortunately I have missed this program, hopefully I will catch this some time in the future in its repeat telecast.