Being that I write about the black widow on a regular occasion, I would be remiss if I did not include some personal experiences to liven things up a bit. I had an encounter with not one black widow, or even two. No, my black widow experience involved six of the little venomous spiders. Curious? Read on faithful reader… It gets interesting.
Black Widow
One fine day this past spring my wife sent me outside to finally gather and dispose of the trash that had been sitting for about a week or two. Okay, so maybe it had been about a month, but a week or two sounds better. Whatever the case, I let the trash go to long, and was now faced with gathering it up and getting it gone. I headed out there and dove right in.
Now, seeing as how I am a bit of an expert on black widows, one would think I would have the sense to put on some gloves. Why? Well, black widows love trash. Check. Black widows love damp areas. Check. Black widows love dark areas. Check. Black widows go anywhere that insects might be. Check. I could go on. The trash bags that had been sitting outside had been there quite a while, and they were the perfect homes for the black widow spider. Yet I dove in with no gloves and even bare arms. (legs too now that I think of it)
The black widow bite potential never crossed my mind as I was focused on trying to keep the bags from falling apart as I picked them up. About six bags into my clean up, I reached down and grabbed a bag……As soon as i raised the bag off the ground, I looked just beyond my fingers and there she sat. A big, fat, plump black widow. She froze right away, and just looked at me. We came face to fangs, if you will.
My initial reaction was to shiver because the dang spider was right there. My hand could not have missed picking her up by more than a centimeter. If I had reached just a hair farther, I would have picked her up in my bare hand. A spider bite would have ensued. As I stood there looking at her, I caught movement in my other hand. Crawling from the top of the bag I was holding (with my other bare hand) was yet another plump black widow!!
I dropped the bag, and immediately backed away from the trash. Amazingly I had come within a centimeter from two black widows and neither had bitten me. Both black widows had plenty of opportunity and neither actually did.
I went and put on several layers to continue my work. When I returned both spiders were gone. I dove into the rest of the trash with great care. By the time I got through it, I encountered four more black widow spiders. One of them actually crawled on my glove.
Yes, I crapped my pants but still did not get a venomous black widow spider bite.
The moral of the story? Sometimes you can try to get bit, and not get bitten. Then other times you can be minding your business and not even risking yourself and get bitten. Black widows are not the aggressive spiders that they are put out to be. I gave them plenty of chances that day for sure.
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