Brooke here. Let’s play a quick little game!
What is the worst short phrase you can think of to describe finding a black widow?
I’m off to go freak out, and then maybe I’ll spend the afternoon burning down my backyard.
p.s.: I cannot believe I have needed to use the black widow tag in multiple posts.
Flying by night 
We have a hatch of black widows every so often that we can see because the little tinies are running everywhere. Pretty soon after that they spread out, though, and we don’t pay them any mind unless they end up somewhere that the horses or dogs might accidentally stick their noses into them.
Black widows have a nasty reputation, but I pretty much find them to be shy and easily avoided.
Worst phrase to broach the subject of finding a black widow: “Remember what I thought was a pimple?”
We’ve been inundated with red widows here in rural Florida and the Treasure Coast. Apparently their birth rate is skyrocketing nationwide. They are less aggressive, but have the exact same markings… an venom. So, basically anywhere you’d stick your hand outdoors, like the handle of a trashcan or the ring around your pool pump’s canister, it’s filled with a cotton candy-like web containing egg sacs that look like sea mines. And always. Always. Always! A huge mommy widow watching from the corner.
Excuse me while I go burn everything within a ten block radius to stop the heeby-jeebies.
My turn! “Dire nest”. Also known as a “Communal Spider Web” see here for terrors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_web#Communal_spider_webs
That picture is a small one. I remember pictures of one filling a warehouse that was like 2 or 3 square miles.
Holy Mirkwood Batman. Yeesh!
“Let me take a stab in the dark…”
“Death by a thousand pricks”
“There was a Redback on the toilet seat, when I was there last night….”
Ewwwww? That short enough?
I remember a stint in the San Joaquin Valley, when all we had to keep off the heat were evaporative coolers. We had one outside the living room window, and one day we saw a black widow living in it with an abdomen the size of a grape.
We emptied a large can of bug spray into it and it died, but the grape-sized corpse went on hanging in the cooler the whole three years we lived in that house.
All together now: Eeeeew.
Self-propelled hypodermic.
“That poison’s got legs.”
Ahh the Pacific Northwest: where we only have to worry about Brown Recluse and Golden Orb spiders (Not aggressive, and not too many… ^_^ Hiya Brooke!
We may eat our words some day if there’s ever a big quake/Mt. Rainier blowing, but the NW is pretty good on the ‘nature is trying to kill me’ front.
Acoording to Wikipedia and other sources, we don’t have the Brown Recluse in the Northwest. We do have Hobo Spiders that some scientists believe are the cause of many of the bites attributed to brown recluse outside of their range. For my money, if the bite goes necrotic in the same way, who cares what variety it came from? I’ve got a nice divot in the back of my calf around the diameter of a quarter that was caused by a spider bite, and let me tell you, it did not want to heal. I did once see a Black Widow around here, just a few miles from the coast, He was an obvious hitchhiker on a piece of equipment I was working with.
how about “holy #$%^, hold still… there’s a huge black widow in your hair.”
Yeah… true story. Was working in the yard, then went to the chiropractor who came almost eye-to-eye with it. Holding still while he got a sheet of paper and cup to trap it might be the most difficult thing I’ve ever done…
\”ohh baby keep scratching right th… wait, how are you over there AND over he….uhhh….\”
Also, dare I ask the size of those tiles for a scale comparison?
You know, the spiders don’t look overly happy, either…
Wow, you guys are eloquent! I can’t get past F@CK! F@CK! F@CK!
Well, I have been known to work my way up to WTF!
Just like to point out, that While it might hurt a bit, black widow bites are not fatal to adults, unless you have a pre-existing health condition. Children and elderly people do have to worry though.
Hearing your wife say:
“Oh! That’s a real Black Widow? She’s pretty! Can we keep her?”
To be fair she once hestitated helping me attempt to kill a Copperhead that bitten two of our dogs because it was “pretty”. Luckily when the snake escaped from being pinned, by the ten foot pole i had trapped it with; it was freaked out and never returned to our yard.
Was standing on my porch late one afternoon when we lived in North Carolina. My then-sweetie was rocking on the porch swing as we talked. Something brushed my foot, and I shook it off, at which point he climbed up onto the swing and proceeded to stammer “bb-b-b-b-lack. w-w-w-idow!” Sure enough, when I looked down, it was a widow that had crawled across my foot and was happily walking over our yard. My personal experience with widows is that they’re not overly aggressive, but OMG scary lol
Worst phrase: Ouch! Dammit! Not again!
Got bit by one a couple of weeks ago. Third time. The symptoms weren’t as bad as the first two. Must be getting used to them.
The problem is that the difference between “resistant” and “sensitized” is a narrow one.