The Black Widow- Journalism

For every hope there is a price. My hope was much the same as everyone else’s this past winter- well, except for the snowmobile fanatics. I hate getting pounded on by the Winter storms. My back nags me when I shovel though I do so love to shovel the snow. So, along with the contracted snow removal people making the gravy, and the very small fish die off giving us plenty of trout to angle from places like the Manistee River and all the other great trout streams of Michigan, the cost was a heavy bug population. 

The ticks have been feasting on our dogs like never before seen, and very early this year. Those two weeks of summer weather we had back at the end of February through the beginning of March gave the insect world a shot of nature’s steroids. I killed my first Mosquito on my birthday- the eleventh of March, and that was up in Northern Michigan’s Grand Traverse County. Which, by the way is now hurting severely from the false start to spring killing off the agriculture like the cherries, and further inflicting pain with the drought that is unheard of here in Michigan. Those two weeks of a season out of place gave us some big worries but as the days went on into April those worries became more and more serious. 

On April 21 I had my wife out splitting firewood. She volunteered; no lie. We had a rough year already and a great many persons we were angry with, so splitting wood is a way of getting out the built up aggression. My, the heads she imagined splitting open that day. After she had split several pieces of cut logs with our axe I managed to pull myself away from the computer to go help before she had it all done- and all of the head splitting fun. After all, I had the high score slot on Bejeweled and I just couldn’t beat it no matter how hard I tried. I was supposed to be working on a book I have been writing; memoirs mostly, (being sarcastic>) and having lived such an "event-less, and boring" life, I was in need of more material. I figured I would go into a wood splitting frenzy and smash my leg opened and end up in the hospital. 

I took the axe from her and started tossing the split wood in a heap near where she wanted to stack it. After removing the pieces from the work area I grabbed onto a piece of maple that had been taken from a clump of struggling trees on the edge of our driveway. I steadied it on the chopping block and went to grab the axe but I was stopped by the sight of a spider on the end of the log. I looked at it as it held still. It was shiny and black and had two orangish-red looking spots on it’s back. 

I said, “Hey! Look at this. Now, I have never seen one but I’ll bet that is a Black Widow.” My gal rushed in the house to the computer and within a few seconds she yelled back, “Yep. It is!” I was thinking how my father had always said, “Watch out for Black Widows. They are in wood piles and can kill you.” 

Well, my pop was a bit of a worrier, (mostly, just when it came to his own two children), You couldn’t go spend the night at a friend’s house because it could burn down. If they didn’t have a wood furnace or stove it could happen from faulty electrical. And if that wasn’t enough, maybe from a gas leak. He’d go right into a story about a snake that he had that mysteriously died for no reason at all. It was from a gas leak in the house the veterinarian told him. Well, you get the idea. 

Anyway, in my forty-two years on Earth I never found saw or was shown a Black Widow Spider. I never even saw a picture in a book of one but now I was close up and personal with a female that was big and fat. I went right in the house and got something to put her in. 

You know that potatoe salad that they sell at the grocery store deli? Well, it’s religiously awful. My gal had bought some recently and the only thing good about it was the plastic tub it came in. 

I was intrigued. It just so happened that our almost nine-year old daughter had a Girl Scout meeting that day. They were each supposed to bring a bug box as part of an assignment. She was at the meeting since it started right after school. Jenny had to go pick her up afterwards. The bug box was forgotten when our daughter, Siena, went to school that morning so mom had to bring it to her. 

I said, “Hey! She has to have a bug box but I bet they will give her extra credit for having a great bug in it. What could be better than to bring the spider to show the girls? They are going to be in the forest and stuff, right? Wouldn’t it be a good idea to let them see an important bug so they can know what to be cautious of? An ounce of prevention type thing?” Jenny agreed to take it but as a precaution we taped the box shut so it wouldn’t “accidentally” get opened. Sure enough, when she got there the girls were either freaked out or completely in awe. Madison, the high maintainence girl of the group, went right in to shaking the box around and asking if she could open it. Oh brother! After answering a few questions and giving a tactfully factual lecture to the group about this particular species her and Siena loaded into the vehicle bound back to the cabin.

As the days turned to a week the spider began to exhibit the things that would help me to learn about them. The internet had provided me with quite a bit of information that helped me to understand what I was dealing with. Things like the identifying characteristics, markings and the fact that the webs are the strongest of any spider silk. The silk is stronger than steel wire of the same weight. This is the key to identifying them if they are within your area of routine occupancy. Fact is that these spiders are very reclusive. You may never see one at all. You will, however see the web. Right now there are egg sacks hatching or about to hatch. The babies are very small and reddish. They are cannibals and will eat each other until there are only a few left, which is a good thing because that gives you less of a threat.

The webs are very irregular. There is no rhyme or reason to them at all- no pattern. They can be found low to the ground or high- up to eight feet so far that I have found in my yard. When you find any web at all try to find a piece of it you can touch without destroying the web. Touch it very carefully so that you can feel the tensile strength of it. If it breaks very easily it’s not a black widow web. Remember that the outside cord of the web is usually many fibers, so that means that the very outside edge of any spider web is going to feel strong. Touch the fibers within the field or fabric of the web. You can probably hear the fibers breaking but you can feel them snapping as you drag your finger through them. You can feel the stoutness of the web strength much like a string on a stringed musical instrument. This web characteristic is the one you can rely on for identifying them if they are in your yard or near your home. As it stands, so far, I have found fourteen of them within twenty yards of the front door of my house.

 Spiders are our friends mostly since they eat bugs. Black widows aren’t really as dangerous as they have been made out to be. They get their reputation from their habit of eating their mates after mating but that doesn’t always happen. These spiders are found on all continents except for Antarctica. It is one of six poisonous spiders found in the U.S. It is pretty rare that someone is bitten, about 30,000 bites a year and very rarely fatal but it only has to happen once to be a big deal. Children and the elderly are susceptible to their venom mostly due to the fact that the bite is typically too small to actually get the venom into the blood stream. The females are always black and shiny and typically but not always exhibit the red spots on the topside of the abdomen or the two triangles or hourglass on the underside of the abdomen. The males are not considered dangerous, and are not the same color as the females. The males I have found are exactly the same except for their smaller size and color, which were mottled with brown and black. When these spiders feel threatened they will drop to the ground on a single strand of silk. They are not typically aggressive and have poor eyesight and depend on vibration to tell them what they need to know. If they are protecting an egg sack and you happen shove your hand into the mass of web they may attack to bite. Most bites occur from them getting knocked around or somehow physically intruded upon but the majority of the time they will flee. You could find them in log piles, lumber heaps and firewood piles. They can be found near the edges of woods and forests, trees with deadwood and rotted out knot holes, corners of your garage that are rarely disturbed like among things that are seldom used. Cardboard boxes stacked in corners, the eaves of your outbuildings and house, in your well house or pit, and among the bramble-berries near the rivers, streams or lakes. You can best find the webs in the early morning when the dew is still on the plants. You can see them in the evening with a flashlight causing the strands to gleam in the beam.

Spiders are not my favorite creatures but they do have a job in the kingdom of nature, which we benefit from. There are more spiders around you than any other bug. You just rarely see them because they are so small. The fact is we had a light winter and an early start to spring. The consequence has been more bugs. Armed with a small amount of information and a good spider spray, you can combat them. The chance of a bite is rare but it only has to happen once to traumatize your family, so my advice is to look for the webs. Once you find them, continue to stalk them to catch the spider out of it’s hiding spot. Only then can you kill them because the spray has to physically reach them. Spraying the web will do little unless the babies have hatched, killing them but that still leaves mama.

The fourteen spiders I have found at first alarmed me but after I thought about it, with everything I learned from watching the one I kept in a box, I decided that I was successful and proud of my accomplishment. Just as any hunter is proud of their prey, I am proud to share this with you so you may protect yourselves and your family. If you think you have them and need a hand at eradicating them from your immediate space, just drop me a line and I can be of service. Good luck my friends.   

 

References

University of California - Riverside (2007, June 14). Biologists Unravel The Genetic Secrets Of Black Widow Spider Silk. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 27, 2012, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2007/06/070613071233.htm

Jones, Susan C. Ph.D. (2007). Black Widow Spider HYG-2061A-04

Ohio State University Extension Fact Sheet

Retrieved from http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/2000/2061A.html

Preston-Mafham, R. and K. (1989). Spiders of the World. New York, N.Y: Blandford Press Ltd.