SPIDERS! AACCKK!!

[Lunachick]

It's going to be 97 today with 200% humidity. I'm going to the hose to get cold water for the girls and what do I walk into? A major spider web with a huge garden spider in the center eating it's meal from last night!! Aaagghh!! I almost lost it! I mean that web was made out of nylon, and that spider was bouncing away in the middle of her web! I had a cold sweat and the heebie jeebies all morning.. so watch out when you're walking around in your yard at this time of the year!

 

[chickflick]

Those garden spiders are so beautiful!! I don't like spiders as a rule, but some of them are really pretty. And they do help us gardeners! What I really HATE is the feel of spider webs!

 

[rosyposyosy]

spiders dont do much for our yard - except webs. so i take my 2 week old chick around and she eats them all.

 

[Frozen Feathers]

Yuck..We get those incredibly big, nasty, gray barn spiders, everywhere. Well, they are big for Maine standards anyway. They make huge webs and I am forever walking into them. I wouldn't mind so much if they didn't decide to build them on my front steps so first thing in the morning I walk out into a web. Ewwwww.

 

[Patchofheaven]

What a coincidence, I just came in from watering also. I saw this huge spider web in my red bud tree - it stretched from the limbs down to the grass. I turned my nozzle to "JET Stream" and knocked that web down.

I don't like spiders either and usually would have just walked right into that web not paying attention to where I was walking, then started running like a mad woman trying to get it off of me. not this time...

 

[wegotchickens]

Just reading about walking into a web makes my skin crawl! Hubby laughs at me because I walk out of the house onto the front porch in the morning with my arms stretched out in front of me, groping for webs. Would much rather hand-smack them then walk into them! And they string them in the walkway because the porch light and windows draw bugs...

My new problem is black widows in the corners of my raised beds. I know they eat pests, and their webs are the ground-cover type, but how scary! I have at least 10 black widows around me! And the peeps don't eat them, which I guess is good. Can a chicken get poisoned by eating a poisonous spider? Can they get bitten and sick? My peeps eat wasps all the time and don't seem to mind, but what about black widows???

 

[rosyposyosy]

my chick its spiders all the time. (i love it!!) but i dont know about the big scary poisonous ones....

 

[Lunachick]

Hey I like spiders. I just don't like walking into them first thing in the a.m. trying to pull the web out of my hair. And I wish they would build them in better place than doorways and walkways! But I love that they eat bad buggies

 

[countrygirl4513]

Quote:
If it was a definite "Garden Spider" with the white design in the middle of the web... around here... that means fall is on it's way. I'm always happy to see the Garden Spider, it gives me something to look forward to... cooler weather! They are a good spider, I never kill one. Now Brown Recluse... different story, I got bit by one of those buggers. I hate them!

 

[wegotchickens]

If it was a definite "Garden Spider" with the white design in the middle of the web... around here... that means fall is on it's way. I'm always happy to see the Garden Spider, it gives me something to look forward to... cooler weather! They are a good spider, I never kill one. Now Brown Recluse... different story, I got bit by one of those buggers. I hate them!

The kids and I used to catch crickets and throw them into the garden spider's webs when the kids were little. We called them writer spiders because of the zigzags they 'wrote' in the center of the web.

I don't kill spiders, even the widows. I know they have a job to do. But I got bit by a BABY brown recluse (the size of an ant) and have a scar and went on antibiotics to get over it. So I worry about what a widow can do to my peeps! I know enough to bang on the garden beds before I work in them, and the widows have never given me a fright. But with at least 2 in each of my 5 beds, I'm going to be overrun if we don't do something!!​