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My unwelcome house guest


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This little beauty (well, big beauty) greeted me on my basement door this morning when I came home from school. She is now a former spider. Spiders I can live with. Venomous, nasty looking spiders this size I can't live with. Yuck!

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Ya gotta admit though, the black widow is one sleek looking spider. Very common around here too. I keep an eye out for tangled, messy looking webs since the BW isn't much of a "web designer." :)

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2rzoopy.gif

<...> She is now a former spider. <...>

It's not pinin,' it's passed on! This spider is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker! This is a late spider! It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! <...> It's hopped the twig! It's shuffled off this mortal coil! It's run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible! This.... is an EX-SPIDER!

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Yep, I just found one right at the foot of the basement steps. Terminix on the line first thing in the a.m.

I'm so creeped out after reading horror stories online about massive infestations that I don't even want to get into bed!

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I glad it wasn't my home, my daughter would have gone ballistic.....she hates bugs of any kind (she does like three legged hornets :thumbsup: , ones with scorpion tails on them ). It could have been worse though J. It could have been a Brown Recluse The Fiddler, they are very, very nasty. I hope you get rid of the nasty buggers totally, good luck.

Edited by Angels49
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I found a bunch of those in my garage a couple of years back. I went nuts with the hammer!

Last July my girlfriend was bit by a hobo spider. Her arm still has 3 black marks from the bites.

They sure make these spiders potent these days.

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Nope. Black Widow.

I'd be almost 100% sure the Black Widow is the same spider as the Aussie Red Back. If not they would be close cousins. Out here there has never been any recorded adult death from a Red Back bite (although I can't be 100% sure about infant deaths, that one I'll have to look up.) Having said that, they do have a nasty bite and it is the only type of landborne creature envenomation I know that is not treated with a compression bandage. To do that doesn't really stop the venom flow through the lymphatic system, it just increases the pain and discomfort to the patient. We just wash the wounds with running cool water or leave them if hospital care isn't too far away and perhaps put some ice on there if it's available. The spider to really look out for here is the Sydney Funnel Web (and the Blue Moutains Funnel Web). They are deadly, and I mean deadly. There have been quite a few adult deaths over the years from bites from these spiders. If you recognise having being bitten by one of these call an ambulance immediately and seek first aid help while waiting for the ambulance. As these spiders are ground dwellers people are sometimes bitten while weeding the garden. I always make sure I'm wearing good thick gardening gloves when I work in the garden. These things have fangs about 6mm (1/4") long and aren't afraid to use them. If you see one of these with his front legs raised off the ground in a very agressive pose it's best to back off and leave him alone. He's giving you a warning. In the funnel web it's the males that are most venomous and aggressive, their venom is 6 times more toxic than the female's, so they only milk the males for antivenene. I know I'm probably a bit strange, but I don't mind most spiders as they keep the insect populations down to a reasonable level. I have only ever seen one live Funnel Web in agression mode and fortunately he was in a glass jar, which I almost dropped on the floor when I picked the jar up out of a cardboard box that a mate of mine had in his colledge office. He was lecturing student nurses at that time on the effects of various envenomations and had arranged for some captive Funnel Webs to be brought so they could see first hand what they looked like.

Ross.

Edited by ross blackford
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Grew up in the Mojave desert (Lancaster/Palmdale CA) on a ranch and used to kill those things all the time as a kid with rubber bands. One sneaky b**tch decided to make her home in the post of my bicycle seat once. Needless to say, I wasn't doin' much riding. That lil' bugger would sit right at the top of the hole (under the seat) and would see me sneak up to kill it, then retreat down the hole. One day, musta caught her sleeping cuz she felt the wrath of my #64 rubber band! Was a big one too! Didn't know they had those back east. Glad they're not up here though!

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Just pick up a jug of Home Defense from Ortho...easy to apply and much cheaper than hiring a service. I do my place twice a year...early spring and late summer. No problems. The spiders stay outside in the bushes where they do great work at eating pesky insects such as mosquitoes. Besides keeping them alive outdoors provides me photographic opportunities!

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Yep, Black Widow indeed! I too had a few of them around the garage last year. It was my first time seeing one, ever, and to tell you the truth I felt a bit intimidated by them initially (after remembering all those Discovery Channel/National Geographic shows about them) that I let them be for a week or so. Went back in with cleaning supplies and lots of sprays to get rid of them and they haven't moved back in as far as I can see. I'd normally never be intimidated by spiders as I used to, with my brother, catch the real big ones back when we lived in South America for a couple of years but this time, for some reason, with the BW, I decided to take a step back and plan my 'extermination' strategy.

Rob

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2rzoopy.gif

It's not pinin,' it's passed on! This spider is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker! This is a late spider! It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! <...> It's hopped the twig! It's shuffled off this mortal coil! It's run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible! This.... is an EX-SPIDER!

of course i nailed it to the perch, if i hadn't...it would have muscled up to the bars, bend them apart with its 'fangs' aaaaaaaannnnnddd...voom.

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:salute: We may moan about living in the UK, but at least we don't have those horrors to deal with. Although last week I found one in the bath that was about three inches leg span, picked him up with a duster and put him out in the garden.

Robin.

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