My wife called me to the laundry room last year.
She had folded towels, and there were two stacks on the table, a few inches apart. She pointed to the black spider that had built a web between the stacks in the last 25 minutes and asked “Is that a Black Widow?”
As the answer was affirmative, I bravely brushed her aside and squished it. I do not tolerate insects (or arachnids) in my house, and nothing venomous is allowed to live outside. Except snakes.
Those I’ll catch & release.
I’m a hypocrite.
We find less than a dozen in any given year, and all are executed without due process.
Catch and release is what I do with harmless spiders, but brown recluses and black widows get swacked. It’s my species vs. theirs. When my son was a baby, I was pulling into a parking spot at Aldi’s when I saw a black widow hanging from the rearview mirror, red hourglass clearly visible. By the time I finished pulling in and had turned off the ignition, it had dropped. Got the baby out of the car seat, checked meticulously all over, never did find the damn thing. Needless to say, it was a tense ride home. Turns out they had infested the garage.
I live in Oakland and black widows are pretty common around here. I say don’t worry about them. They’re timid and very rarely bite. Kill them when you see them, if you must, but don’t go to any length. You’ll never eradicate them anyway.
Just to let you guys know, last night I almost had a heart attack when I saw something out of the corner of my eye and thought there was a black widow on the wall of my kitchen.
If it makes you feel any better, my wife was sitting in the bathroom when she saw a tarantula come out of a drain in the floor. She got out in a hurry, and I squashed it with my shoe.
Possible upside: tell the inquisitive 6 year old grandchild that venomous black widow spiders live under the wellcap, and you’ll never have a little Timmy/Tammi trapped in a well, or anywhere near it.
I am skeptical of the folks saying that a major infestation is something to worry about. Maybe it’s different on the west coast? I have never heard of black widows behaving as an invasive species in the way that roaches, ants, and even bees can be.
When I find one I tend to kill it, destroy any obvious egg sacs, and let that be it.
On one of those exterminator type shows that was on a few years ago, they used to get rid of Black Widows with a simple broom like tool. They would just walk around and use the broom to whisk away all the webs. According to them, their webs are much more time/energy expensive to build than regular spiders, and if you remove their webs they soon starve.
