On Oct 24, 2:33*pm, JRStern wrote:
On Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:58:33 -0700 (PDT), eva shovelful

wrote:
Is this normal? I mean, I realize
that they are not aggressive, or at least the article about them says
they're not, and yesterday it unsettled me enough that I squashed her
good.

They can be very common, certainly are where I am in Los Angeles, but
they cause minimal problems. *They have no interest in you, they can't
eat you while you can squash them on purpose or accidentally. *Actual
bites are quite rare and not usually fatal unless you're allergic or
have other serious conditions - you can google for symptoms and
treatment. *If I see some of their uneven corner webs I will usually
remove the web, just to encourage them to move on. *But other styles
of spiders also make corner webs - we seem to be having an abundance
of long-legged spiders with corner webs this year, which seem to have
longer, less random patterns. *But I remove those too, just in case,
even though AFAIK they don't have a hazardous bite for humans.

J.

Good point, J. All three times we happened across them, they were in
their "homes" surrounded by their webs, and had I taken the time to
get a really good look, I'd have noticed the irregular corner webs.
Each place we uncovered them (the key phrase here is UNCOVERED) the
first was she was tucked up against the side of the bricks where there
was plenty of food in the form of crickets and other such insects in a
raised bed that was overgrown with crabgrass, the second was dumping
out the five gallon nursery pot that was holding the day lilies and
there she was...... and the third was dumping out a split open three
gallon pot I'd used to toss dug up clumps of iris roots that had sat
undisturbed in one spot for two months. Knowing those places, will
make me more alert. (especially when the deck off the back of the
house is high enough for an adult woman to bend over and rake all the
way up to the house to get the leaves out from underneath it. So
finding another black widow isn't out of the question. that second
one was buried, and unless she died under ground being unable to dig
herself out, she's out there still........time will tell. thanks for
alerting me, though. and I will check out more information regarding
their bites. I know their bite mimics heart attacks, and since I have
a slight touch of asthma, I have to be wary. I don't go around all
overly careful, I just get on with life. great imput though.
eva