> Only a handful of specimens (less than 10) have ever been collected in California and usually there is some connection between the spider and a recent move or shipment from the Midwest. There is a great "awareness" of brown recluse spiders in California mostly through a misguided media barrage which is fed by a fear of the unknown and unfamiliar. I repeatedly have seen the media in their "quest to seek out the truth" write completely speculative stories about the existence of the brown recluse in California. Unfortunately, the truth is not nearly good enough to sell news and therefore, a speculative story is fabricated based upon faulty assumptions.