A Morning Surprise

[alanro]

The first thing shikzoid noticed when she opened the hatch to the crawl space this morning to allow the repairman access to the furnace was a large Black Widow spider on the underside of the hatch door. Even hearing about this freaked me out... I had not known that Black Widow spiders could survive in this cold a climate

Comments

THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE...

[shikzoid]

Just before I squished him. You can't see the hourglass in this picture, but it was there - not as prominent as it is on a breeding female, but enough to adrenalize me real good.

The dispatcher at the pest control company said that I'm the third person in three days to find Black Widows in the Ballard neighborhood.

The gentleman they sent out to blast the spiders said that what I found was an adult male and they don't bite. However, he said, here's a newborn, with the white body, and here you can see how they get darker when they get older, and this one is very close to be mature......

He also said that in this weather they'll be very torpid and won't bite. Come the equinox they expect to be busy.

(In case anyone cares, they use pyrethrins, distilled from chrysanthemums, as their organic, environmentally sensitive pesticide.)

[intelligentrix]

Hey there! I'm writing this from an apartment in NYC and wondering where I saw the bit about shikzoid going to NYC to help Lise clean out the apartment. We're here for the weekend, and it crossed my mind that if she was here now, we could have dinner or something. Anyway, you should have our cell phone numbers still, yes? Otherwise, our lovely host has wi-fi and I'll be checking my email.