Absolutely not. Existing inside the house is Being A Spider in the First Degree, which carries a mandatory (and rapid) death sentence. You might let the culprit off easier if he’s only guilty of Being A Spider in the Second Degree (outside).
Quick! Help! I just killed a spider on the street! Should I drag him into the house and THEN call police? :eek:
Absolutely none.
We found a black widow in our utility room yesterday.
I was squeezed behind the washing machine, struggling to fit both my hands, a clamp, and a screwdriver into a 3 inch space to fix a leaking pipe on the back of the water heater. My husband leaned over the front of the washer, holding the flashlight and offering helpful comments like, “You need to raise it up a little higher!” and “Try coming at it from behind!” and “Honey, it’s not going to work that way, you need to turn it around!”
Just as I was tensing myself to jump up and bludgeon him to death with a bottle of fabric softener, he shouted, “Don’t move!”
I froze with one hand twisted at a 127 degree angle behind the water heater (seriously, I think I sprained my wrist fucking with that stupid thing).
“What?” I demanded.
“Just…don’t…move,” he said.
I craned my neck just in time to see him tear off a big piece of duct tape and make a grab at something in the air over my head. He calmly wadded up the tape, tossed it aside, and remarked, “Black widow.”
Well. In 2 minutes the clamp was placed and tightened, the water was turned back on, and I had vaulted over the washing machine and was standing in the shower at the other end of the house, whimpering. I don’t like spiders. And when I think of my husband grabbing the foul thing out of the air, protected only by a thin layer of duct tape, and he could probably clearly feel the ickyjuicy crunch of it as he squeezed it…<shudder>
<twitch>
<shudder>
Holy fucking Shamrocks, Batman!
I’m just reminded why I prefer a cold climate.
My plan is to walk accross the States in three years. Someone remind me to bring my 12-gauge.
Okay, I’m scared now. :eek:
We have a lot of areas in our house that are largely untouched but frequented by the cats (closets that don’t see much use, under-bed spaces, corners behind furniture–the same sorts of things that you find in most houses where folks aren’t as diligent about tidying up as they should be.
I’ll add this to dryer fires on my list of things that scare the <bleep> out of me…
So…if a cat were to be bitten by a black widow, is that all she wrote, or would we have time to notice symptoms and get them to the vet for treatment?
Depends. If you’re in Texas, you might be okay. I’d argue “criminal mischief”. If you have more than six legs, clearly you are up to no good.
I do too. There is a reason I don’t live in Arizona anymore! I love really long, snowy winters best.
As for the spider thing… I don’t like spiders enough to want to touch them, but they don’t creep me out that much. I certainly would never kill one unless I really had no other choice (e.g. I was in a close, confined area for an extended time with a brown recluse and nothing to catch it with) which really… never happens. I can’t remember ever killing a spider. Scorpions, now, those freak me right the fuck out (make me lose my appetite, too) but I still don’t kill them. I force myself to find a way to move them outside. Then I go back inside, jump up and down flailing my hands around, screaming like a little girl and saying “ew! ew! ew!”
Am I weird that my reaction to critters that creep me out isn’t instant “KILL IT! IT IS CREEPY TO ME SO IT DOESN’T DESERVE TO LIIIIIVE!”? Because to me that’s a really odd reaction.
There are a couple of spiders in the basement bathroom at our house. Not big or scary ones, just normal house spiders. I call them my “spider buddies” and I talk to them while I’m on the toilet 
Let’s see . . . my Grandfather got stung between the eyes when a scorpion fell off the ceiling onto his face while lying in bed. And my Dad, as a child got stung when he stuck his arm underneath the pillow of his bed one evening. This occured in Arizona. Hopefully, the curse of the scorpion is broken now. I’d never seen one in wild until hiking around Mount Able in California and looked under a rock.
Your antics did remind of this wry comic
I got a hotel room in Scottsdale, AZ comped because I found a scorpion in the room. BOTH NIGHTS.
…so now, OpalCat secretly carries scorpions in a jar to every hotel room she visits and releases one per day. 
checks off another place not to visit
Shhhhhhh!!
Time for a reality check. How many people do you know who have cats? How many have you heard whose cats have been bitten? Yet, how common are black widows? The cats have fur. It is only going to manage to bite a nose. No way could a spider get through fur with such tiny fangs. I don’t think they could possibly penetrate a foot pad. Chances are tiny.
If they do get bitten, then I don’t know how long they’d have. An adult human has about 6 days, but I don’t think that gives you any guide. I doubt it is simply a ratio of the weights. A spider near the cat tray, I would probably put outside. Other in cupboards would be able to climb away. They will always try to escape. Spiders do not attack monsters thousands of times their size! They defend when squelched.
Why not ask a vet how many black widow cases they get? That should give you a guide to the size of the risk. if you do, can you let us know? I’d be really interested in the response.
One of my favourite little house spiders is lying dead on the floor under her web tonight. She was behaving strangely all day. I wonder what my vet would do if I took her in for a post mortem!
Speaking of favourite spiders… Spiders are not allowed in the house. I know they’re here, but as long as I don’t see them it’s all good. But if I seen them, they have to spend time in the penalty jar. That is, they have to stay in the jar until I get around to taking them outside. So I caught this little guy in the tub. Didn’t get round to taking it out, and after a while I caught a larger one. Into the penalty jar with you! A minute later there was one spider and one little brown ball. The new spider seemed very active, so I decided to keep it for a little while. The next day I found a little moth on the wall and fed the spider. The moth was exploring the jar, and the spider was quick. Sucked it dry. This morning there’s a trampoline-style web diagonally in the jar with a little round hole that’s the start of a funnel like the ones in the bushes here. I’ll release the spider today. It’s interesting, but it will eat better outside.
Is this your little guy - a funnel-weaver ? I managed to tickle a grass web in Texas and get one to come out so I could photograph her. Yours is probably a wandering male. You can tell - if the front of the pedipalps (the false feet on the front) are engorged like little boxing gloves, then it is a sexually mature male looking for a female. You are not helping the cause!
Not that big, nor as hairy or elongate. I’ve always just called them ‘funnel spiders’ (not to be confused with the Australian ones). No ‘boxing gloves’.
This is The Land Of The Spiders. Delaying mating isn’t going to reduce the number.
That’s a very good point. I get a little irrational when it comes to my cats’ safety, but I guess it’s kind of the same thing that’s true of black widows biting humans–everybody seems to be scared of it, but stories of bites and fatalities are very rare. Thanks for tossing some rationality on my panic attack.
I guess I must not hate spiders quite as much as I thought, because your description actually made me feel sympathy for this particular little spider.
Time to read “Charlotte’s Web” again, maybe. Every time I do that I end up with kinder feelings toward spiders for awhile.
Fantastic book and film. You can go and watch your local Charlotte species spinning her web every night in summer in most parts of the world in most gardens. The garden orb weavers are very common but stay well hidden until after dark. It was watching that for the first time which turned me from a recovering arachnophobe into a total obsessive - and it took one little spider 45 minutes to work that revolution on my thinking. Seeing it sped up on a film is nothing on watching the real thing live. Incredible!