Black Widow Spider!

[Nifty-Chicken]

3 weeks ago I was rebuilding a gate and found the most huge black widow I ever saw... and I've seen a LOT of them. I put her in a jar to take a few pics and then to take a video of my hens eating her, but I forgot and she died in the jar. I guess I can still take pics.... she's HUGE!

 

[BluegrassSeramas]

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeekkkkkkkkkk!

 

[chickenqueen]

I haven't found any in the coop yet.... but they were in the bin where I keep my huge bag of pineshavings and DE. The bin is on the outside of the coop and run. I also found some in the big plastic barrel were I deposit the used pineshavings mixed with the birdstuff... The spiders were under the lids

scared the heck out of me.

 

[coloradochick]

All I have to post about this thread is EEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!

 

[Whispering Winds]

My 33 year old DS is deathly afraid of spiders, and he left a pair of nylon jogging pants here the other day, and when I was putting them in the wash, (if its there, I wash it, no matter who or what it belongs too) I found a white mass of web on the butt of those pants with the spider inside of it. I picked it off without thinking and squeezed it, and threw it away. . .but if he knew he had been wearing a spider on his butt, he would be completely passed out in the floor!!!

Spiders scare me, and we have the big wolf spiders in the house now, and they are HUGE and so dang scary looking. I did catch one the other night in the bathtub and took him outside. Made my 9 year old DS very proud of me.

 

[Iowa Roo Mom]

I don't think we have those around here... We do have the Brown Recluse tho...

*Opens a new window to google Black Widow in Iowa*

 

[rizq]

This thread still gives me the heebie jeebies. Thinking about those black widows makes me want to cry. I am so glad I have not seen any more of them here. Just those nasty, hair looking jumping things. They are out to get me I tell you.

After flipping a straw bale in the coop a couple months back, I felt something in my pant leg. I freaked out thinking I had an egg-sized bug, probably a deadly venomous spider, in my pants (up about the thigh). I started doing the get-out-of-my-pants jig, ready to whip those suckers off when, to my great relief, a mouse fell out.

I'll take mice, rats, whatever to spiders any day!

 

[debilorrah]

Quote:
I felt your panic and relief reading this. PHEW!

 

[ivan3]

No fun without pictures. Depending on the variety, the red markings on the abdomen can vary in position on the abdomen and can appear quite different from the famous hourglass. Below is a `Missouri' Widow with red ovals on the dorsal abdomen, and (seldom seen as they are usually eaten by their mates before they get a chance to wander) a male. The shot just barely shows the two turquoise `lines' on the rostral portion of the dorsal abdomen:

I grew up in So.Cal. so we always had Widows in the house or in the yard (hourglass marked models). They tend to be reclusive and mild mannered unless you mess with a female with an egg sac in the web (easy webs to ID - disorganized in three dimensions and very strong silk).

If we had as many widows as Brown recluse, I'd be worried (Recluse are wimpy and overrated and all over this part of Missouri).

 

[catfish/okie]

Quote:
Same here Ive heard of black widows around south OK but theres alot of brown recluse we call them fiddlebacks. We have western diamond back rattlers, timber rattlers ( we call em velvet tails), broad banded copperheads, pigmy rattlers, and an occasional cottonmouth.