In the past decade, more than 300 people have been struck and killed by lightning in the United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.
During that same time, the grand total of U.S. deaths by brown recluse spider bite: 0ne.
That doesn't include the case of Branson Riley Carlisle. The rarity of the case of the Alabama boy who died Nov. 23 has drawn attention in the scientific community.
According to records by the American Association of Poison Control Centers, the last death in the United States by a brown recluse spider was in 2004. In Alabama, the last death by any kind of spider was in 2002, according to state health statistics.
Now it's true all deaths may not get recorded. But the disparity is indicative, not of how dangerous lightning is, but how unlikely a brown recluse will kill you.
But it does happen. Jessica Carlisle, 23, of Albertville, watched her son decline Nov. 23, after being bitten that Sunday morning. Branson died despite heroic rescue efforts at Huntsville Hospital for Women & Children more than 14 hours later.
"This is a tragic event and a very rare event and people need to think of this as very unlikely happenstance," said Rick Vetter, a retired entomology research associate at the University of California Riverside and one of the nation's top experts on brown recluses.
Jessica had the presence of mind to save the spider and photograph it. Additionally, she photographed her son's bite wound at 15 minutes, 1 hour and 9 hours after the bite.
All of this allowed for confirmation that it was a brown recluse.
Mike Howell, a retired Samford University professor who co-authored "Spiders of the Eastern United States: A Photographic Guide," confirmed through the photographs that the spider that bit Branson was a brown recluse.
"It is indeed a brown recluse spider," Howell said. "And, there is the classical tissue necrosis of the boy's back. This confirms that this spider's bite can sometimes be very serious, especially if the toxin becomes systemic."
A systemic response occurs in less than 1 percent of brown recluse bites. Although that type of reaction can result in death, it is rare, Vetter said.
Usually the brown recluse's venom stays local, and in some cases, not all cases, it can be very nasty, causing necrosis of the skin, leaving victims with deep scars or skin cavities due to dead tissue having to be removed.
When there is a systemic response, it will occur most likely in children or those with a weakened immune system, he said. There is rupture of the red blood cells which releases hemoglobin into the blood stream.
One of the symptoms, Vetter said, is a darkening of the urine, about the color of a cola drink as the venom starts destroying red blood cells and the hemoglobin is freed up and clogs up the kidneys leading to a breakdown in the organ.
As awful as that sounds, Vetter said many times a brown recluse bite is minor and self-healing.
Vetter and other scientists say that often brown recluses get wrongly blamed for bites or skin conditions.
"We get a lot of reports of recluse bites, but it's really MRSA misdiagnosed as a recluse bite," said
G.B. Edwards, an arachnologist at Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
MRSA or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus is a staph infection that can be very dangerous because it is resistant to the usual antibiotics.
These kind of conditions simulate the skin eroding effects of a brown recluse bite.
"The recluse is unusual in that it has an ingredient in its venom that breaks down cell walls," Edwards said. "In that regard it's like rattlesnake venom."
Vetter has done much work debunking misdiagnosed brown recluse bites. He said he has heard reports of brown recluse bites from many places in the United States that don't even have the spiders - such as Colorado, Montana and Maine. In one case the patient had lymphoma, not a spider bite.
The brown recluse spider is found in an area from Texas to the west, Illinois to the north, all of Alabama and parts of Georgia and Florida to the south.
Brown recluse spiders do like to live in homes but they typically don't intrude upon the human dwellers.
On Vetter's website is a story of a woman in Lenexa, Kansas, who collected 2,055 brown recluse spiders in six months in her 1850's built home.
A family of four had been living their eight years and no one had been bitten.