Nika Press LLC
The Complete Guide to
Poisonous Creatures of Florida
by
Sergey Turchin, MD

Introduction

Dear reader,

   I hope this book will be helpful in protecting you and your family from
dangerous creatures lurking in the local suburban jungle.

   As many of you, I am a former Northerner, and used to consider a
common cockroach to be the most dangerous and annoying life form
that occasionally invaded my apartment in Cincinnati’s old Gaslight
district. However, my knowledge of entomology was about to be
expanded when, after finishing medical school at the University of
Cincinnati, I was offered an internal medicine residency position at the
Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida. I was overjoyed, both to have the
opportunity to learn at a world-famous medical institution and to live in
the lush tropical paradise where beautiful sandy beaches, evergreen
forests and waves of the warm ocean pamper the few lucky people who
call Florida home.

   My new apartment was located very close to the Intercoastal
waterway, with a beautiful view of the pond from the balcony.
Immediately I was surprised to find the amount and variety of wildlife
all around me. Herons and ducks filled the pond, small turtles splashed
about, and even a baby alligator showed his leathery back once in a
while. I would often sit outside on my screened balcony, enjoying sunsets
and feeling close to nature. I had no idea how close.

    After a few weeks in my new apartment, I discovered that I wasn’t
alone. My new neighbor was a large black spider, several inches in
diameter and sitting in a web in the corner of my dining room. I found
its company intolerable and overcoming my arachnophobia, battled the
monster with a folded newspaper. After killing the creature, I presented
its body to my landlord, accusing her of putting the lives of her tenants
at risk by allowing dangerous animals on the property. She reassured me
that my spider was completely harmless and advised me to watch out for
brown spiders, the most dangerous spiders in the world. With that
reassurance, I went back to my apartment and only after several days
was able to fall asleep without checking under the bed for dangerous
intruders.

   Several months later, at my outpatient clinic at the Mayo Clinic, I was
surprised to see a very distraught and tearful patient with her even more
anxious husband. Hurriedly they related the horrifying events that had
led to this uncommon display of emotion. The patient was a successful
young executive who had recently moved in her spacious new home
located very close to the Intercoastal Waterway, in a newly-build
subdivision. One morning, after a shower, she was wiping her face with a
towel and suddenly felt a sharp pain and burning in her left eyelid.
Taking the towel away from the face, she saw a creature 2-3 inches in
size, looking uncomfortably similar to a scorpion except for its thin,
curving tail. Screaming, the patient dropped the towel with the
scorpionesque animal on the floor. Her husband, alerted by her screams,
came to the rescue and bravely dumped the insect in the toilet. However,
the burning sensation in his wife’s eye persisted and they rushed to the
Mayo Clinic Outpatient Department, where they had the luck of being
seen by a resident fresh out of medical school, namely me.

   After learning all this information in the first few seconds of our
interview, I felt my levels of anxiety rising as I imagined a deadly poison
coursing though the veins of my poor patient. I expected her to collapse
on the floor at any second. Fortunately, I remained very calm on the
outside, and after using ancient Tao techniques of bringing my pulse
back from 200 beats per minute, I was able to reassure the patient and
examine her. Surprisingly, her blood pressure and pulse remained
normal, and other then a slight redness on her left eyelid, there were no
signs of swelling, sting or injury. Reassured of my patient’s safety for
the moment, I used a tool that becomes more and more part of our life,
the Internet. After a search I was able to find a drawing of the suspect
which had attacked my patient. Once she identified it, I was able to come
up with life-saving treatment, right in my office…

   After reading this guide, you will be able to easily identify the
creature that attacked my patient, as well as distinguish it from the
truly dangerous residents of Florida.

   There are a multitude of poisonous creatures inhabiting the land, sea
and air of Florida. They can be divided into five general categories:
spiders, insects, caterpillars, marine creatures and of course, snakes.
Nika Press LLC
Copyright © 2007 by Sergey Turchin, MD