Widow Spiders in Maine!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Last week, as I was getting ready for my morning shower, I found a smallish black and brown spider near the door hinge at the base of the shower door, as I approached the arachnid, I noticed she had a shiny black thorax and legs, and a round shiny abdomen, she’s about the size of a dime with her legs outstretched, and was in the middle of a small cobwebby web

I grabbed a spare Betta Death-Cup (the cup they sell the poor things in) and herded the spider into it and out of the shower, capped the cup, doubly inspected the shower, found no other “guests”, and proceeded to shower ad get ready for work, I brought her in with me, to inspect her more closely, to see if my gut instinct was right

I took her over to our neighbor store, where the woman there had been bitten by a Widow spider in the past, and asked her to confirm my hypothesis, that I had captured a Latrodectus variolus

Yep, positively identified, but for some strange reason, this widow doesn’t have the distinctive red coloration on the hourglass, under strong light though, the patterning is there, the broken hourglass and stripes are there, the red coloring is not

I have a Latrodectus variolus sitting right next to me in a Betta death-cup, and in all honesty, she’s pretty shy and nonaggressive, actually pretty boring to be honest, I’m going to find a nice open field in the middle of nowhere and let her free, she’s done nothing to harm me, then again, I get along pretty well with my arachnid friends, having a pet tarantula for a while must have given me good Spider-Karma

that said, I’m certainly going to be a lot more mindful about the nooks and crannies in our 200+ year old colonial house with granite basement…

2

Ewwww! I despise spiders so you have my sympathy.

Still, I’d rather deal with black widows rather than the brown recluse Black widows tend to stay in their webs so I feel like it might be easier to avoid them.

::shudder::

3

I have a black widow that lives behind the washing machine. She’s been there quite some time now and I’d not seen her catch any bugs. Yesterday I went out and caught a crane fly and put it in her web. Her bulbous body seems to have doubled in size since eating it!

4

I was walking with manthous and the dog the other night and was bored and investigating “stuff” with the flashlight, and counted THIRTEEN black widows. We walk along a stretch of grass next to a school that’s lined with a bunch of posts, and at the bottom of one I noticed a disjointed-looking web which seemed like it might belong to a widow. Bingo- there she (or he) was, sitting in the web. So I checked out the next post. Another widow. And the next. Another. Added them all up- thirteen! One of them was clearly bigger than all the others- I wondered if that was the parent and the smaller ones were offspring. Crazy!

5

We have so many in my yard I just gave up on killing them all and started giving them names instead.

6

The Northern Black Widow, which is the one you have, isn’t the same thing as the archetypal “Black Widow” found in the southern part of the country. It’s still poisonous (though less than 1% of bites are fatal), but as you’re observed, it’s not identical in coloring, and it’s much more suited to our weather.

7

I misread the title as “Window Spiders in Maine” and I was freaking out trying to figure out what this new species of spiders was that inhabited windows of your houses! :smack:

8

Thank Og it wasn’t one of those. They’re a real pane.

9

Fortunately, they won’t harm you if you just sit sill.

10

Question–what are you meant to do if you see something like that? like, a poisonous spider, or a scorpion?

11

I would run screaming away in the opposite direction of NM, crying like a little girl.

Which, most would agree, is the most rational reaction to just this type of situation.

12

MacTech, According to Elfkin, your spider is native to your area. If it were not, I’d urge you to kill it, and not set it free. It is a misguided kindness to allow an introduced species to live. The stories of bad outcomes from introduced species are legion. Showing mercy to an invader may spell death for native species.

And PLEASE, be careful around those things! No one needs more pain in their lives. Widows and Recluses aren’t fun.

13

Yeah, all you people naming your dear little death bugs can just stay away from MY fat ass. I almost quit a job because of a black widow in my work area once…

Joe

14

Face I understand your concern, but I’m good with spiders, the only time I’ve ever been bitten was back when I was a kid, tromping through our field, I ran through the web of a Yellow Garden Spider and got bitten, she was purely biting in self defense, it was my fault for bumbling through her web, the experience was interesting to say the least, the pain wasn’t too bad, felt like a bee sting, but after the initial bite, I got to experience the effects of a mild neurotoxin, basically my arm (I was bitten on the hand) and hand had a faint tremor/vibration that lasted for about 3-4 hours

since then, I have never been bitten, I understand the warning signs spiders give before biting, and in the case of dangerous arachnids like Widows, I practice hands-off handling techniques

plus, keeping a pet tarantula and feeding her fresh, free-range crickets caught in our pesticide-free yard has given me plenty of good arachnakarma, spiders seem to like me, or at least tolerate me…

most people would kill widows, but as long as you don’t bother them, they’ll leave you alone, so I have no problem trapping them and releasing them out in the wild where they can eat pest insects