Black Widows

Tonight was my first encounter with a black widow. I already knew we had them living around us, but hadn’t actually seen one. Well, actually we may have had one in the garage a couple of months ago, but Tim didn’t wait to get confirmation and killed it. Just now I went out to take the trash bin to the curb, and saw a suspicious-looking spider moving around its web outside our front door. While the light out there wasn’t too bright, I saw it had some red markings, and so I called Tim out and we looked at it together. We noticed it had the telltale red hourglass shape on the ventral side of its abdomen. So Tim killed it. Part of me felt bad, as I’m more of the live-and-let-live mentality, but on the other hand I don’t want black widows reproducing all over the place. And I certainly don’t want Lena getting bit when I take her outdoors because I’m not sure how cats fare when injected with black widow neurotoxins. In reading more about black widows I have found out that they are not that dangerous to humans, though you can have unpleasant side-effects from the bite. And because of the occasional more serious complications you really don’t want to risk getting bit if you can help it. It still does not sound as bad as a brown recluse bite—those are just downright disgusting and if you should want to see any pictures, there are plenty on the internet.