Widow Slayer
Posted in Animals, True Story on Oct 15th, 2007
(Click for an up-close, sharper look)
I’ve seen a black widow in the wild before, but it was in a place that didn’t directly affect me. Sunday was a different story.
Our neighborhood (and the town in general) is seeing more than its fair share of black widow spiders this year, and for the past week our Homeowner’s Association online forums have been crawling with reports of black widow spider sightings (and subsequent vehement eradication). We hadn’t seen any around here, and because we don’t have a wood pile or a shed, I wasn’t particularly worried about it.
Trimming tall grass beside the rock retaining wall that runs the length of our backyard, I noticed sudden movement near one of the small concrete drainage pipes set in the wall. There, hanging from the outside edge of the haphazard web she had spun inside the pipe, was a large female black widow.
I stopped what I was doing and retrieved my camera and a can of insecticide spray. The can’s directions included how to kill spiders, so I figured it would do the trick.
The spider had returned to the drainage pipe, perhaps disappointed that the grass that I had sent flying into her web was not prey. I poked a paint stir stick a few inches inside and saw her scramble into the darker recesses of her lair. Two feet deep and about four inches in diameter, it provided her enough wiggle room that I didn’t want to risk reaching in to smash her.
Instead, I liberally sprayed inside the pipe, and then stepped back a foot to watch the poisonous fog rise. I didn’t see her, so I took care of my next order of business: looking in the other drainage pipes.
I found black widows in the next four to the right and the next one on the left. I saw only one male, significantly smaller than the female but distinctive from more common spiders. By this point calling it an infestation, I sprayed those pipes and included the ones lacking webs just to be safe, dousing the spiders’ bodies directly when I could.
When I returned to the first pipe, I saw a large female struggling to crawl along the rock wall. After capturing her on photo and video, I checked the other pipes. In all but one — where the male and female lay lifeless together — the spiders had emerged to escape this foreign threat, and weakly made their respective ways to who knows where.
You may have to push “play” more than once, but give it a few seconds.
Although I don’t like killing anything, I admit I have little problem laying waste to pests that could kill my son. Something takes over and gives me a newfound desire to kick some ass. Plus, I had selfish reasons for wanting them dead.
The black widow’s venom, 15 times more potent than that of rattlesnakes and stronger than cobras and coral snakes, commonly causes severe muscle pain and cramps, dizziness, tremors, and heartbeat irregularities. The volume of venom is considerably less than that of snakes, making fatalities rare among healthy adult humans.* But, still, ouch.
These markings are found on the backs of immature females.
Sure, I could have considered ways to capture and relocate the spiders, but my respect for other life forms dwindles precipitously when my child is threatened.
After they fell to the ground, I stomped them. Later, as I researched on Google, I found this quote on a gaming forum (of all places):
“I wold (sic) have stepped on them just to be sure. Chemicals are great and all but no spider can survive the underneath of my shoe.”
You said it, bub.
Moving on to the front of the house, I searched the nooks of our front porch and positively identified two spiders as black widows. My stepladder got me high enough to reach the other spiders with the spray and a long paint stir stick (for squashing), but some were tucked into the corner so well I couldn’t play taxonomist. The egg sacs of four others were identical to the known widows, so I’m pretty sure I killed six out there, ratcheting my total for the day up to 13 (nine if you don’t count those educated guesses).
I liked this one, too, just for fun:
“I used a regular exterminator when one of my ex-girlfriend’s was pregnant.. that kid was born with the biggest schlong I have ever seen. Since then I have been licking my walls on a regular basis.”
Although we plan to fog the garage and the house, and to call an exterminator, I’m not interested in such side effects. If I were, I would have responded to some of the spam e-mail I’ve been receiving.
Next I get to deal with the five new fire ant mounds I found while mowing the lawn.
The infamous red marks on the female’s abdomen.
*All information culled from Wikipedia, except quotes, taken from this page at Firing Squad.
All pictures and video shot with the Canon A560 in macro mode. Some pictures cropped a little. (Hey, you try getting closer if you like.)
I’m with you, Mark. Try to respect all living things and such. But you can respect the little critter and still say, “I’m sorry…but you have to die” And while it probably delutes the message a bit, I figure it’s even ok if you say it a bit maniacally, “I’m sorry…but you have to diiiiiie!!!!!” while laughing and spaying chemicals about madly.
But maybe that’s just me.
I agree… what can hurt me or my kids, needs to go.
I hope you got them all.. or that the exterminator will get them all for sure!
I hate living with bugs…
Oh, man… that’s one of the things I love about the impending winter around here. We don’t see no bugs of any sort until some time in April. Well, there’s the occasionally reported case of a bag of grapes at the supermarket toting interlopers with hourglass figures on their abdomens, but those are few and very far between. And, of course, instead of dealing with bugs, we have to deal with spending an entire winter indoors, cooped up with each other for company. Bit of a trade-off there, eh?
Those are VERY cool shots, by the way. Do you have a macro lens? The DOF in those shots looks pretty narrow. Nice.
(I bet I just impressed the hell out of you with that photographical jargon right there, didn’t I?!)
;)
Moksha - I actually said to the first one, “Sorry you’re dying right now,” and only let her suffer long enough for pic and video goodness. That last part might have been the only thing I would feel bad about.
Dave - Bugs are the major reason I prefer winter hiking/backpacking/camping (but not Canadian winter).
Simon - Well, shoot, I could have exported several of these little ladies up your way. If only I’d known.
On the photos - I included in very small italicized text the how-to information. But, because you asked, I just used the macro mode on my new Canon A560. I have a totally amazing macro lens for my Nikon D100 (best optic quality lens I own), but it’s not autofocus and can’t “talk” to my camera’s light metering system at all. I didn’t want to go completely manual while getting pictures of a moving (and dangerous!) spider.
WOW…I’ve never heard of that. I know we used to see them every once in awhile around the house in Heber, but that was more like one every few years. I can’t believe you had 13 that you could find! I hope that exterminator can make sure you’re spider-free.
I’m not sure if it is still the case, but when I worked for Merck in the early-mid 90’s, they were still the only company manufacturing the anti-venom for Black Widow bites.
I haven’t seen any Black Widows around, but several months back I did have a nice Brown Recluse spider on the wall in my hotel room. It was a perfect one too, with the nice violin pattern on its back. That didn’t make me very happy. Maintenance came in and sprayed everywhere, including some places I advised him to spray, and we didn’t see any others under anything. I was invisioning that 20/20 episode where they found several of them tucked behind the headboards in hotel rooms just from random searches. NASTY.
Sheesh. Any idea what the reason is behind this sudden deluge of spiders in your area? That would freak me out.
You have a new Walmart in your area? (I blame everything on Walmart. And I’m usually right.) If the spiders’ habitat was disturbed, they would have had to find another place to go… was my point.
We’re mainly in a brown recluse area up here and I’ve pretty much made my peace with the fact that there are brown recluses living in my house right now. The good thing about them, though is that they’re…well…reclusive and not very likely to bother you. I have no such confidence in Black Widows.
Update: I killed another one, after confirming the red hourglass on the abdomen, in our garage tonight.
Charles - It’s absolutely crazy! We didn’t hear of one sighting last year or the year before.
Linda - Um, actually a new Wal-Mart just opened less than a year ago fewer than two miles away. It was an open field before, though, so unless you just want to blame Wal-Mart for fun, I guess that wasn’t it.
Moksha - Yeah, we have the brown recluse in this area, too. Me no likey no spiders that can bite me.
um…..ew.
I have no problem whatsoever with the killing of spiders, poisonous or not. While I realize they play an important role in the eco-system or the life chain or something, they do not kill the centipedes I sometimes find in my house. I know this because I have way more spiders than centipedes and if they were doing their job, there wouldn’t be ANY centipedes. And by the way, I also kill centipedes, ants and earwigs. I would not, however, kill a mouse. I let that up to the traps.
ok now THAT is nasty and sends chills down my spine. if i ever saw anything like that near or in my neighborhood, i’ll move. seriously! i can’t bear to think of getting up in bed one night and having this spider staring down at me or crawling on my body — then again, i might be dead by the bite by then. thank goodness there aren’t any black widows in ohio — i don’t think so anyways. The only other thing that will scare me like that is hairy tarantulas.
Nice pics and I can’t say I blame you for killing them. We found the one we did in a rest stop in Arkansas and where we found it and put it back didn’t seem it would be an issue to anyone. Beautiful creature!