Hi all

Today I found my second black widow spider. Found one last year, also.

My front yard has about a 4 foot slope at the edge. About 4 years ago, we
took out the grass, found some large rocks on the farm, and terraced using
the stones, 2 per layer. Turned out great. Last spring when I was cleaning
up and replacing mulch, I found a black spider with 3 red dots on it.
Everyone said it was not a black widow. I looked it up and, sure enough, it
is. Today I found another. Just behind the rocks and not into the dirt,
but under the mulch.

The book says they only bite to protect their young, or to kill their mate.
I guess I can say that must be true, because I had that lady pinched between
my fingers and the rock when I saw her.

I hate to wear garden gloves, but maybe I am gonna have to get used to it!

Yuck.

Judy

Today I found my second black widow spider. Found one last year, also.


If you have only found 3 in the last two years, count your blessings..... I
swear NC is black widow country as I find them EVERYWHERE (but not in the
house). Some were quite healthy (read - HUGE. I swear I killed one that was
1" long in body) and made expansive webs. A key I have noticed is that they do
not make organized webs. If you look for the chaotic webbing especially in
dark places, you'll pretty much know what you've got. Most spiders make the
pretty webs (I've had webs stretch 8' tall in front of my house) or small
"tunnel" webs. Black widows just make chaos. LOLOL

Just my 2 cents.........
Christine

Widows are actually quite common, fortunately not aggressive. They are
a member of a group of spiders referred to as Cobweb Weavers, as the
description of the web imply's. Foundation stones, rock and wood piles
are perfect habitat for widows. You are fortunate that she did NOT
bite you when pinched between your fingers and the stone.

http://www.chesapeakebay.net/info/black_widow.cfm

As for the Carolinas, spider heaven along with points south of there.
the Eight Foot Web you saw is most likely from a Golden Silk Web
Spider, Nephilia, females get HUGE, males are very small, and they are
one of the few spiders to be communal.

http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.ed...la/n._clavipes$narrative.html

Did I ,mention I HATE spiders? G

Dave Fouchey


On 20 Apr 2003 01:03:41 GMT, unya (Purchgdss) wrote:

Today I found my second black widow spider. Found one last year, also.


If you have only found 3 in the last two years, count your blessings..... I
swear NC is black widow country as I find them EVERYWHERE (but not in the
house). Some were quite healthy (read - HUGE. I swear I killed one that was
1" long in body) and made expansive webs. A key I have noticed is that they do
not make organized webs. If you look for the chaotic webbing especially in
dark places, you'll pretty much know what you've got. Most spiders make the
pretty webs (I've had webs stretch 8' tall in front of my house) or small
"tunnel" webs. Black widows just make chaos. LOLOL

Just my 2 cents.........
Christine

"Judy and Dave G" wrote in message
...
Hi all

Today I found my second black widow spider. Found one last year, also.

One? We found one every month last summer. I wear gloves when moving stuff
around and digging. They will make you a little sick, but the little ones
could have a more severe reaction and need to be hospitalized.

Another clue is an extremely sticky, thick-feeling web. Messy too, as others
mentioned. We grew up in black widow country - saw a lot of them, caught
some in a jar until mom found out grin, and none of us 10 kids was ever
bit by one. The aggressive house spiders are worse around here for biting,
and they leave a nasty spot.

The black widow will eat a lot of bugs for you and isn't as big a threat, in
my opinion, as people think.

Mac Knight
http://www.macknight.addr.com

"Judy and Dave G" wrote in message
...
Hi all

Today I found my second black widow spider. Found one last year, also.

My front yard has about a 4 foot slope at the edge. About 4 years ago, we
took out the grass, found some large rocks on the farm, and terraced using
the stones, 2 per layer. Turned out great. Last spring when I was
cleaning
up and replacing mulch, I found a black spider with 3 red dots on it.
Everyone said it was not a black widow. I looked it up and, sure enough,
it
is. Today I found another. Just behind the rocks and not into the dirt,
but under the mulch.

The book says they only bite to protect their young, or to kill their
mate.
I guess I can say that must be true, because I had that lady pinched
between
my fingers and the rock when I saw her.

I hate to wear garden gloves, but maybe I am gonna have to get used to it!

Yuck.

Judy

Black Widows will make a home where there is a dark corner or hole in the
ground, under and between stones, under siding on your house. Just about
any dark place. The easiest way to find them is to find their webs first.
If you run a stick through them, the web is very tough and sticky feeling.
The widows move very fast to escape when they are found. Sometimes I spray
with spider spray under the cracks and they become lethargic and drop down.
It usually doesn't kill them though - tough little buggers. Squashing them
is the best way to make sure they're dead.

I just found 3 of them in a dark shed on our property. Only caught one; the
other two escaped. I also found one under a pot saucer turned upside down
after being washed out. Didn't take long for the little sucker to make a
home there.

Yes, they do sometimes have 3 red dots on their backs and sometimes they are
just shiny black. ALL of them have a red hour glass on their stomach
though. The best way to describe them to someone is that they are very
shiny, black spiders that have no hair on them. They're glossy looking.
Even their legs are like that.

A couple of years ago, I had a large sunflower topple over after a heavy
rain. After removing the roots, there were holes in the soil; I found a
huge widow living there soon after. In my normal gardening activities, I
don't wear gloves, but if I'm reaching into dark places, pulling weeds,
working in mulch, I definitely wear gloves. I wear thick cowhide work
gloves. I own a flower planting business where I pull all the old plants
and replant new annuals each spring and fall. Gloves are a must. Friday, I
finished a planting job and encountered a baby garter snake in their garage.
I just moved him to a Japanese Maple so he wouldn't bother me in the beds
where I was planting. It's sometimes scary, but I'd never give up gardening
or planting.

Penny
Zone 7b - North Carolina
"Judy and Dave G" wrote in message
...
Hi all

Today I found my second black widow spider. Found one last year, also.

My front yard has about a 4 foot slope at the edge. About 4 years ago, we
took out the grass, found some large rocks on the farm, and terraced using
the stones, 2 per layer. Turned out great. Last spring when I was
cleaning
up and replacing mulch, I found a black spider with 3 red dots on it.
Everyone said it was not a black widow. I looked it up and, sure enough,
it
is. Today I found another. Just behind the rocks and not into the dirt,
but under the mulch.

The book says they only bite to protect their young, or to kill their
mate.
I guess I can say that must be true, because I had that lady pinched
between
my fingers and the rock when I saw her.

I hate to wear garden gloves, but maybe I am gonna have to get used to it!

Yuck.

Judy

In article , "BiG Orange" @ wrote:

"Judy and Dave G" wrote in message
...
Hi all

Today I found my second black widow spider. Found one last year, also.

One? We found one every month last summer. I wear gloves when moving stuff
around and digging. They will make you a little sick, but the little ones
could have a more severe reaction and need to be hospitalized.

What luck I live somewhere where the chances of a dangerous spider bite
are about one in a million. Imagine gardening in Australia where so many
of the spiders can kill ya! I regard spiders exclusively as friendly
denizens that keep harmful insects in check. I find orb spiders & their
webs to be extremely beautiful, little ground spiders are so cute,
side-ways running stripy crab-spiders are like cartoon characters. But now
& then some big honking spider appears suddenly & I let out a yelp of
horror -- though having never lived where spiders kill people I don't know
where even that most momentary horror comes from.

Little grass spiders, by the way, when they're trying to get away from you
& carrying their eggsack on their back, if you pluck the eggsack off their
back, they stop dead in their tracks & come back to find their eggs. All
their fear vanishes & the only thing that matters is finding the eggsack.
You can hand them their eggsack & they'll reach into the air & take it
from you most delicately. I didn't find this out during cruel teasing of
spiders for sport, but while collecting garden insects to feed terrestrial
salamanders. It's hard to imagine there's much of an intellect behind
those many teensy eyes, but spiders do seem to have complicated little
personalities.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/

Cool. I love to learn about things like the grass spiders.

If you feel like being bit, jump across to our side of the hill

We have lots of black widows and aggressive house spiders (also known as
hobo spiders), both of which give a nasty bite. Lots of rumors of brown
recluse spiders too, but I think most sightings of them are actually the
house spiders, which have a bite much like a brown recluse but not quite as
nasty. I've been bitten on the leg at work (while sleeping - lol - I'm a
firefighter) and had a spot about quarter-sized that suffered some necrosis
(death of the tissue) down about a 1/4" into the skin. Never been bitten by
a black widow, nor have I found them to be aggressive.

Orb weavers are marvelous creatures. Very large web spinners who catch a lot
of insects. What we in eastern WA call garden spiders also make wonderful
webs. They are gorgeous in the fall with dew on them.

Mac Knight
http://www.macknight.addr.com

"paghat" wrote in message
news
In article , "BiG Orange" @ wrote:

What luck I live somewhere where the chances of a dangerous spider bite
are about one in a million.

Paghat, I wouldn't be quite so sanguine about no lethal or dangerous
spiders. Look up the Hobo Spider....and say hello to your neighbor!

Cheers!

Dave Fouchey

On Sun, 20 Apr 2003 10:10:35 -0700,
(paghat) wrote:

In article , "BiG Orange" @ wrote:

"Judy and Dave G" wrote in message
...
Hi all

Today I found my second black widow spider. Found one last year, also.

One? We found one every month last summer. I wear gloves when moving stuff
around and digging. They will make you a little sick, but the little ones
could have a more severe reaction and need to be hospitalized.

What luck I live somewhere where the chances of a dangerous spider bite
are about one in a million. Imagine gardening in Australia where so many
of the spiders can kill ya! I regard spiders exclusively as friendly
denizens that keep harmful insects in check. I find orb spiders & their
webs to be extremely beautiful, little ground spiders are so cute,
side-ways running stripy crab-spiders are like cartoon characters. But now
& then some big honking spider appears suddenly & I let out a yelp of
horror -- though having never lived where spiders kill people I don't know
where even that most momentary horror comes from.

Little grass spiders, by the way, when they're trying to get away from you
& carrying their eggsack on their back, if you pluck the eggsack off their
back, they stop dead in their tracks & come back to find their eggs. All
their fear vanishes & the only thing that matters is finding the eggsack.
You can hand them their eggsack & they'll reach into the air & take it
from you most delicately. I didn't find this out during cruel teasing of
spiders for sport, but while collecting garden insects to feed terrestrial
salamanders. It's hard to imagine there's much of an intellect behind
those many teensy eyes, but spiders do seem to have complicated little
personalities.

-paghat the ratgirl

In article , Dave Fouchey
wrote:

Paghat, I wouldn't be quite so sanguine about no lethal or dangerous
spiders. Look up the Hobo Spider....and say hello to your neighbor!

Cheers!

Dave Fouchey

We called them funnel spiders as kids. I still catch hobos to feed the
salamanders with some regularity. They're easy to tease out of their
funnels, & they make a pleasant mouthful for a pet herp. I used to catch
them bare-handed & never got bit, but in my old age I'm warier & catch
them with a paper cup & plop them in the collecting jar. The females
usually eat their partners after mating so if you find them in their
funnel, there will usually be a male husk & one big fat fat happy female
-- & the females aren't particularly "toxic" if they do bite. If you find
one far from a funnel, it's probably a male, & worth looking in the
vicinity for the funnel to catch the female while collecting.

I've read that they bite without provocation, but I've grabbed them & held
them between two fingernails expecting that if they did bite they'd only
nibble a nail, & tossed them quickly into a jar. I really believe they
tend not to bite unless squeezed or pressed, like if rolled over on in a
sleeping bag, but obviously some care has to be taken. I never felt that I
was taking chances snatching them -- it's just not possible to catch 'em
alive with gloves on -- & I caught them bare-fingered for twenty years,
before I lost my nerve & started using a paper cup. I've also lost my
nerve about changing lanes rapidly on the freeway, bruisingly rough sex, &
tasting stuff that smells bad -- so it isn't the spider, it's just me
becoming older & more chicken.

Even if bitten by the more potent male, the chances of death are close to
zero percent. Mostly they're only an issue around here because some (dumb)
people worry they're brown recluses (which are never encountered here).
And also because they can get quite big so are scary.

I sleep on a futon on the floor. Perhaps once every two or three years a
large house spider runs across my face & I just about shit the sheets.
These might or might not be hobos, there is more than one largish spider
of that sort that commonly enter houses, all make the same funnels, & all
the males hunt far from any funnel. I wouldn't be able to tell one from
another, though only one species is even associated with necrotic skin
injury. I know people who've been bitten in their bedsheets by these
fellows & had quite a nasty blackened wound from it, but never went to a
doctor (though it's recommended) & never suffered any lasting dire
consequences.

I'm sure someone somewhere had an allergic reaction & dropped dead, but I
never heard of it, & would not regard the hobo as an extremely dangerous
spider. Some people apparently can have a slow-healing skin lesion (if a
male spider bit them really excellently & if the person was particularly
susceptible). As the worst one can encounter on Puget Sound, I think my
commentary stands -- nice to be somewhere where one in a million spider
bites are nothing to worry about. There are more than occasional
discoveries of the black widow in western washington too, but too rare to
fret over.

Pollinating honey bees are much more dangerous if number of necessitated
hospitalizations & near brushes with death & actual deaths are the
measure. I'm not scared of bees either. But if I lived in Australia where
the spiders & the snakes aren't as gentle & as close-to-harmless as the
ones in my Puget Sound garden, I think I'd worry a bit.

Where the Rocky Mountain Fever Tick lives, though, that really bothers me
on hikes. You might never even know you were bitten by an infected tick
until your whole body erupts in hairy moles, supposing you don't just drop
dead first. Creepy-ass critters.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/

"paghat" wrote in message
news .. Creepy-ass critters.

Ohh. That caught me by surprise. Lost my mouthful of coffee right on the
screen ;o} Thanks, I needed that.

Judy

Funny spider story -- could have been serious, turned out just fine.

DH and I were going to sleep in Nashville TN apartment.

Me: "There's a spider on our ceiling. Let's get rid of it."
Him: Lecture on how spiders help the environment and are beneficial and
tend to be non-aggressive yada-yada . . .(I think he was just tired and
didn't feel like taking care of it.)

Me: "OK. If it bites me, I'll make sure you regret it!"

Next morning: I wake up with a spider bite. Turns out to be a Brown
Recluse, which we didn't know were so common in Tennessee (being recent
transplants). My leg swells, gets streaky and my doctor calls me into the
Poison Control. Sigh. He also forgot to mention that antibiotics can
sometimes disable birth control pills. Oops. Our son is now seven years
old. :-)

-- Lisa
-- pelirojaroja
"dangerous redhead"

"paghat" wrote in message
news
In article , Dave Fouchey
wrote:

Paghat, I wouldn't be quite so sanguine about no lethal or dangerous
spiders. Look up the Hobo Spider....and say hello to your neighbor!

Cheers!

Dave Fouchey

We called them funnel spiders as kids. I still catch hobos to feed the
salamanders with some regularity. They're easy to tease out of their
funnels, & they make a pleasant mouthful for a pet herp. I used to catch
them bare-handed & never got bit, but in my old age I'm warier & catch
them with a paper cup & plop them in the collecting jar. The females
usually eat their partners after mating so if you find them in their
funnel, there will usually be a male husk & one big fat fat happy female
-- & the females aren't particularly "toxic" if they do bite. If you find
one far from a funnel, it's probably a male, & worth looking in the
vicinity for the funnel to catch the female while collecting.

I've read that they bite without provocation, but I've grabbed them & held
them between two fingernails expecting that if they did bite they'd only
nibble a nail, & tossed them quickly into a jar. I really believe they
tend not to bite unless squeezed or pressed, like if rolled over on in a
sleeping bag, but obviously some care has to be taken. I never felt that I
was taking chances snatching them -- it's just not possible to catch 'em
alive with gloves on -- & I caught them bare-fingered for twenty years,
before I lost my nerve & started using a paper cup. I've also lost my
nerve about changing lanes rapidly on the freeway, bruisingly rough sex, &
tasting stuff that smells bad -- so it isn't the spider, it's just me
becoming older & more chicken.

Even if bitten by the more potent male, the chances of death are close to
zero percent. Mostly they're only an issue around here because some (dumb)
people worry they're brown recluses (which are never encountered here).
And also because they can get quite big so are scary.

I sleep on a futon on the floor. Perhaps once every two or three years a
large house spider runs across my face & I just about shit the sheets.
These might or might not be hobos, there is more than one largish spider
of that sort that commonly enter houses, all make the same funnels, & all
the males hunt far from any funnel. I wouldn't be able to tell one from
another, though only one species is even associated with necrotic skin
injury. I know people who've been bitten in their bedsheets by these
fellows & had quite a nasty blackened wound from it, but never went to a
doctor (though it's recommended) & never suffered any lasting dire
consequences.

I'm sure someone somewhere had an allergic reaction & dropped dead, but I
never heard of it, & would not regard the hobo as an extremely dangerous
spider. Some people apparently can have a slow-healing skin lesion (if a
male spider bit them really excellently & if the person was particularly
susceptible). As the worst one can encounter on Puget Sound, I think my
commentary stands -- nice to be somewhere where one in a million spider
bites are nothing to worry about. There are more than occasional
discoveries of the black widow in western washington too, but too rare to
fret over.

Pollinating honey bees are much more dangerous if number of necessitated
hospitalizations & near brushes with death & actual deaths are the
measure. I'm not scared of bees either. But if I lived in Australia where
the spiders & the snakes aren't as gentle & as close-to-harmless as the
ones in my Puget Sound garden, I think I'd worry a bit.

Where the Rocky Mountain Fever Tick lives, though, that really bothers me
on hikes. You might never even know you were bitten by an infected tick
until your whole body erupts in hairy moles, supposing you don't just drop
dead first. Creepy-ass critters.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/

On Sat, 19 Apr 2003 20:26:42 -0400, "Judy and Dave G"
wrote:

The book says they only bite to protect their young, or to kill their mate.
I guess I can say that must be true, because I had that lady pinched between
my fingers and the rock when I saw her.

EEK! flailing and shuddering violently