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Spider Man

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His changing feelings began to cement after a car wreck in August 2003. His new gray Saturn sat idly at the busy intersection of Iowa and Orchard streets in Lawrence, waiting for someone to turn. A car approached from behind and rear-ended Sandidge. The impact caused severe whiplash and momentary paralysis. "I was pretty messed up. The car was pretty messed up," he says. He spent the night in the hospital, but going home didn't solve problems he would soon encounter.

"I lost my [teaching] job because I couldn't walk without pain, causing me to lose my house because I had no money," he says. "I had to leave school for six months, which set me back a semester and a half. I lost part of my research work." He sued the driver, but the defendant's attorney pointed out that Sandidge had a prior neck injury from his football days, significantly lowering his reward. "I didn't get one-fourth of what I was out [because of the injury]," he says. "I'm still paying off credit-card bills from then." Instead of appealing the ruling, he moved on. "I didn't have time to waste. I had to do research."

But he'd had a lot of time to think about his future. "That made me realize I didn't want a sedentary lifestyle of somebody writing papers all day or writing the next PowerPoint presentation to teach a class full of kids who don't want to listen."

He decided to pour all of his brown-recluse knowledge into his own pest-control business. And shortly after launching Brown Recluse Solutions, he married Kristina Krusemark, originally from Pratt, Kansas, a small town between Dodge City and Wichita. He met her when she worked at a Lawrence coffee shop that he frequented during his research days. He says his wife wishes he'd work less, and she worries about the chemicals he uses but knows he's careful.

He says people have questioned his decision to leave academia and go into pest control. "Why do that instead of being high on the hill, yuppity-yuppity and all that stuff? I just felt like it was needed. I couldn't get my message out to the people."

His message often includes chidings.

On home builders: "Poor, poor, poor construction. The vast majority of new houses aren't good and ... I typically see that when new houses have recluses, they have way more than older houses."

On home inspectors: "Some are unwilling to go into attics, and if they get bit, your home insurance will be paying for it."

The general public: "People associate spider infestations with dirty homes, nastiness ... and being a filthy person, but that has nothing to do with it."

Impatient customers: "People don't feel right unless you come to their house and spray something. But I'm trying to do a minimally invasive, maximum-investigation technique to find out all I can about the organism. But people don't catch on to that."

Doctors: "Doctors have been so wrong [about spider bites] for so long ... it makes me upset. If you have a stomachache, the doctor might give you pills that you have to pay for even if they don't work. And if you don't pay, they'll take you to court. There's no other business like it."

Academia: "I don't want to have to fight for grants to do research. Research that they dictate. I don't want to be a professor — it has nothing for me."

And, most of all, other pest-control companies: "They'll send two technicians who will be there for four hours working on a house that will still have recluses [after their treatment]. I go through in three and a half hours and get rid of them."

Sandidge's treatment of Mr. and Mrs. Jones' house has led him to the closet of the master bedroom. Cardboard boxes and an army of shoes, mostly women's, line the floor of the well-lighted walk-in. Most of the hanging clothes have been removed. In the ceiling is a door to the attic.

"If you want to get the heebie-jeebies scared out of you, go up there," Sandidge says. He's fairly sure the ceiling door will open up to a wasteland of dust, dirt and insulation, fully infested.

"It's gotta be," he says. "Usually what I'll do is push the door up a little bit, and they come falling out."

He stares up at the door as if imagining what's on the other side.

"Most people don't want to go up there," he says with a wide smile.

Strapping on knee guards, filling his many patch pockets with tools and vials, he asks Mrs. Jones about the roof replacement done on the house recently. Improper roof replacement can cause a brown-recluse population to flourish in an attic.

Because he will be spraying in a tight environment, he puts on a respirator mask, headgear reminiscent of a World War I gas mask. He climbs up the ladder and slowly lifts the door.

"Awww, not bad," he calls down, referring to the roof replacement. "Somebody knew what they were doing."

Like an astronaut on the moon, he takes big, careful steps around the dirty-white insulation, wincing as he limbos around vertical support boards. His headlamp glimmering faintly, he continuously disappears and reappears from the mound of insulation toward the back of the attic.

The smell of his botanical agent accompanies him as he comes back toward the door. He steps out from the attic entrance and down the ladder, eager to pull off the cumbersome mask. His breathing is a little heavy after the exertion of working in the attic. He's covered in sweat, webs and insulation particles.

"Not so bad," he says. "I think the roof was put on right. There's a few companies in town that care. Some don't, and I have to clean it up sometimes," he says, referring to spider-attracting debris.

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