A Little Visitor
My front porch will be a concrete slab, about 5’ x 7’ and sit atop the block wall foundation, which will be filled with dirt and leftover concrete rubble from pouring my concrete footers.
Collecting all my concrete rubble from around the worksite I came across four black widow spiders. They were in four different locations and were always found under some piece of concrete or inside a concrete block. None of them were found on wood, always concrete.
It was pretty cool the days I was collecting the concrete rubble, like maybe 45 degF, so none of the spiders were moving around very fast. That’s good because it made it easier to photo them.
I always knew that black widows had the familiar red hourglass shape on their bellies, but I didn’t know that some of them have a row of red diamonds down their back. The largest of these spiders I found had a tail bulb 3/8” to a little larger. I’m thinking a widow of this size could put a pretty good bite on you. Yes, I was wearing good leather work gloves when doing this work. I wear gloves when doing most any work. Still, I don’t know if a black widow this large could bite through the gloves.
Collecting all my concrete rubble from around the worksite I came across four black widow spiders. They were in four different locations and were always found under some piece of concrete or inside a concrete block. None of them were found on wood, always concrete.
It was pretty cool the days I was collecting the concrete rubble, like maybe 45 degF, so none of the spiders were moving around very fast. That’s good because it made it easier to photo them.
I always knew that black widows had the familiar red hourglass shape on their bellies, but I didn’t know that some of them have a row of red diamonds down their back. The largest of these spiders I found had a tail bulb 3/8” to a little larger. I’m thinking a widow of this size could put a pretty good bite on you. Yes, I was wearing good leather work gloves when doing this work. I wear gloves when doing most any work. Still, I don’t know if a black widow this large could bite through the gloves.
posted by Tony @ 9:14 AM
2 Comments:
Here's an update on the spiders. Yes, they can be found in places OTHER than around concrete or block. I have a wood stack in the garage that I cleaned up and rearranged in the spring of '08. Behind the stack was a giant spider web. When I took a broom to the web I noticed how tough it was to cut through. This told me to look for the widow, which I found tucked away in the corner of the web. This widow was as big or bigger than any I've seen. The broom did a good job on her too.
So, here's a tip. If you come across a spider web that is hard to knock down, there might just be a black widow in there somewhere.
Build safe guys and gals.
I found out this spider is a northern black widow (has the red diamonds on top and hourglass on belly). I read about a guy that got bit on the fingertip (spider was in a work glove he put on - didn't shake it out). Pain and other symptoms spread up his arm and several days later he even had muscle spasms all the way down into his legs. If you get bit by one, go to the emergency room.
The southern black widow doesn't have the diamonds, but it does have the red hourglass.
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