Yesterday we had a lovely time with some of Eric's old high school buddies. We grilled out (what other kind of food can you have on a Monday holiday?)but left the grill cover on the ground until that evening. As we went to cover it, I saw this huge black spider. I don't know that I've ever seen a spider's body that was so completely round and black!! I pointed it out to Eric just before he grabbed that edge of the cover. He looked at it a little closer and noticed that it had a red markings on it. It was a black widow!! Just for future reference, however, the red wasn't that glaring and you have to look from above at the spider to see the red because the colors are so rich and it's actually quite shiny!
I am NOT happy to have encountered my first black widow, and especially not so as it was on my back porch!!!
4 comments:
Black widows don't normally hang out in damp climates. I'm surprised you saw one. We used to have tons of black widows back in Vegas. I have a classic little boy story involving bugs and black widows that I will have to tell you some time.
There's apparently three different types of black widows in North America...southern, northern, western. Funny that these little bug run-ins leads me to do some research b/c it reveals how uneducated I am about a lot of stuff.
2 years ago when we first moved to UT. I was reaching into a picture box we had behind our couch and felt cob webs. I got the tingles up my neck and pulled my hand out fast. Looked into see a spider web and sitting in it was a huge black widow. I caught it in a jar and let Anna take it to preschool for bug week then dumped the whole thing jar and all into a dumpster on BYU's campus. It gave me the heeby jeeby's just looking at the thing.
Goodness Liz! I think I'll just have you teach Dalton and Abby's Term 1 Nature Study! (Insects and Spiders) Already you have TONS of info in just a short amount of time! But, I'm with you - no more bugs! (or spiders!)
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