A BLACK WIDOW UNDER THE LID

Rex Burress

When I lifted the garbage can lid, I was startled by a big black spider with a red hour-glass marking, most obviously a black widow!

The only way that shiny arachnid could have entered was through a slight slit on the lid, and I puzzled as to how it had climbed the slick barrel to enter and weave a web in the darkness. But often widows are found in dark corners as if in hiding.

Next day I decided to capture her for a Nature Center exhibit, but she had dropped to the bottom of the stinking garbage to build a new web. I wondered if spiders can smell, because she was in the pit of stink. How animals smell, see, hear is mostly a mystery to us. It seemed like a cruel fate the spider had crawled into, but the flies were on the outside.

Just as there are many harmless insects that mimic poisonous insects to take advantage of the others reputation, so I discovered a mimic black widow once at the Oroville Nature Center desk. I noticed tiny spiders appearing as if hatching, and not knowing if the dull speck of a spider was perhaps black widow, I began smashing them. Suddenly, I felt a terrific sharp pain on my wrist like something stabbed me, and at the time I didn't know what caused the bite that was painful for two weeks. Since some damp-wood scorpions and centipedes were also in the Old Bathhouse, we elected to use a bug bomb, even though the loss of the natural action in a 'nature' center was lamented. Scorpions are fantastic climbers, and several clung to the dark back of framed pictures!

What did I find under the desk next day? On the floor was a dead, apparently shiny black widow! However, there was no red hour-glass marking on the underside nor did I have customary black widow symptoms. So I began research, and discovered in my spider book, the “False Black Widow,” Steatoda grossa, not as dangerous as the Black Widow, Latrodectus mactans, and no red color, but the widow anti-venom works for relief of Steatoda bites, showing some relationship.

What happened, unknown to me, was that the female Steatoda was watching her spiderlings emerge from the cocoon, and detected my smashing them on the desktop, and became defensive of her babies! I found her very strong web beneath the desk with the spent egg case; a 'tangle-web' common to Cobweb Weavers, as compared to the neat, circular webs of the Orb Weavers common to gardens.

Steatoda originated in Europe and were introduced to North America. They are mostly cosmopolitan and called “Combfooted or Cobweb House Spiders.” There are about 30,000 species of known spiders in the world, about 3,000 species in Europe, and about 3,000 in North America north of Mexico. Spiders are readily shuffled all over earth via cargo, and some species even “balloon” on silken webs to new locales. They love the tropics and Australia, where there are some dangerously poisonous Funnelweb Mygalomorphs and Brazilian Phoneutrias in addition to Widows. A side-note: All spiders have fangs and some degree of poison but those dangerous to man are few in number.

The Tarantula is a most formidable-looking spider with huge fangs but weak venom. Naturalist Paul Covel once dropped a large Mexican tarantula, and when he picked it up, it bit him on the hand. He said there was some numbness and it was sore for a couple weeks, but no worse than a bee sting.

“The difference between utility and utility plus beauty is the difference between telephone wires and the spider web.” --Edwin Way Teale

“Spiders are anti-social, keep pests under control, and mostly mind their business, but they somehow summon fear in humans who are far more dangerous and deceitful and have hurt more people. Of the two I'm more suspicious about the latter.” --Donna Lynn Hope