Hubby found a female black widow in her web attached to one of our garden tools in the garage. He captured her and kept her in a plastic container for awhile, not being certain what to do with her. (Hubby is like me and doesn’t want to kill anything unless absolutely necessary; besides, there are bazillions of biting bugs that I want the spiders to get.) I did some research online – they’re not aggressive, and bite only if threatened (bite not normally serious, but still…). Killing her wouldn’t keep others out, so I let her go near the wooded lot next door. But, finding her on our garden tools means one of us could accidentally “threaten” others who decide to set up housekeeping in the garage (or my car, for that matter - yikes!) I assume there are plenty of pesticides out there that we could spray on everything in the garage, but since we handle most everything out there, I don’t know about that. Any ideas, or do we just have to inspect everything before touching it?
According the the guys on that Verminator show, Black Widows like clutter (hence their fondness for garages and other storage areas). They build their webs slowly compared to most other spiders, and if you continually clean up their webs, they starve. (or move on I suppose.) They did use poison for really bad cases, but mostly they use a kind of swiffer duster type tool to break up the webs, or a shop vac to pick up the egg sacks.
For starters, spiders are predators. Keep their prey out of the garage, and they won’t want to come in. Keep it clean and dry, no food garbage or anything like that. Make sure its well sealed, and keep the doors closed. Vacuum around and get egg sacks as well.
If that doesn’t do the trick, there are pesticides that are effective on spiders.
And i admire your restraint. I’ve nothing against spiders, but when one invades my space… Capture is not an option. It becomes a fight to the death. And this goes double for a black widow or brown recluse.
The Household Tips thread currently in MPSIMS had a tip that said Bay leaves prevented spiders.
Hold on…
Yes, here it is.
Black Widows scare the crap out of me. I saw a program about a guy who got dropped off for a long weekend at some house in the middle of the desert. He stuck his hand in the mailbox and a widow bit him. He had no way to get medical care quickly, and was just so beyond fucked up by the time they got to him. His arm turned black and swelled up to gigantor size. If I’m not mistaken, they had to sew his arm to his chest to save his circulation. It was a freekin’ nightmare.
My SIL lives in AZ and has a regular monthly appointment with the exterminator. I think I’d go that route.
Kalhoun reminded me – we do have a contract with an exterminator, mainly for termites, but I’ll check with them. I know the brown recluse is truly nasty, but no signs of that one anyway. (Good Lord, why, oh why would anyone settle here (Spanish 16th century) with all these frickin bugs and swamps, not to mention the heat and hurricanes). Bay leaves – yes, I have bay leaves and I’ll try that too! Maybe I’m over-reacting; we just need to be watchful. (Hell, we saw an eastern diamondback rattlesnake in our front yard a few years ago, so a black widow spider shouldn’t be such a big deal, right? (But a rattlesnake is a lot easier to see than a spider.)