“There was no space between my pinky and my middle finger,” he said.

A trip to the emergency room produced a diagnosis: spider bite, probably a brown recluse.

Despite their scary reputation, brown recluse spiders rarely bite and the severity of their bites varies from person to person, according to information from the Virginia Cooperative Extension Office at Virginia Tech. The symptoms from a bite can range from nothing at all to a severe reaction like Duvall’s.

Eric Day, manager of the infect identification in the department of entomology at Virginia Tech, said brown recluse bites are very rare in this area and can only be confirmed if the person captures the spider or if tests are run on the person to identify the venom.

“It’s unconfirmable unless you have the spider,” he said. “You can’t confirm it by the look of the bite. You do find them from time to time in Virginia, but it is still a very rare spider.”

If someone thinks they have found one, they need to kill it with a spray or put it in a jar with rubbing alcohol to kill it and then take it to an extension office, where it can be identified, Day said.