Widows

I believe I have now killed 3 male black widow spiders in the last 3 weeks, and one definite female black widow (lurking in the folds of our grill cover). Then there is the brown widow spider that I also killed today (more-potent venom than the black, but they inject less of it--yay! Click on the link, though to see the egg sacks of the brown widow. They are quite cool. The one I killed today had made 4-5 of them.)

Apparently, this is a banner year for the evil little critters. I brought both of our kids as well as one of their friends out to see the dead lady black and her dessicated male, just so they would know what one looks like and to know what to do if they see one--back away, scream like hell, but keep an eye on it so we can find it and kill it. I actually lost track of one of the males when I went in to get a can of Raid. Very fun to try to intentionally go looking for a widow spider! Along the way I found a second one near the first.

Yuck! Now we're all creeped out...and we figure there are a whole bunch of them in our basement. Bwahahaha!!!