Yesterday, as I cleaned off the plant shelves in the kitchen I encountered a black widow web near the window. I moved a painted decorative grasshopper candle-holder, and found the usual dust motes and dead bugs, but didn’t see the spider. So I carted the votive holder to the sink, placed it there to be washed later, and swept up the web.
After I cooked dinner, and as I loaded the dishwasher, I soaped up a sponge to wash the dust off the holder, when I found, tucked in a little nook inside the cavity of a leg, a black widow egg sac. Now, we’ve had plenty of black widows around the house—outside and in the garage—as well as three inside the house this year, but I do have a black widow tolerance limit. (It has been a splendid year for spiders.) When I reached for a screwdriver to pull out the egg sac, I found the black widow clinging to my ring fingertip. Hours later—I can still feel the prickling on my skin.
I haven’t been afraid of black widow spiders since taking pictures of one a more than a year ago and I realized she was more frightened of me than I was of her—and when I startled her, she ran quickly in the other direction. I have never seen a spider move so fast and I was thankful she wasn’t running toward me. However, having one crawl on my finger was a bit much—in fact, way too much.
This mature widow is no longer with us, but her tingle lives on. I’m glad cold weather is arriving and I sure hope next spring does not bring quite so many arachnid “friends” to visit—at least inside the house.
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