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Thread: Black Widow Spider found in my garage right next to my boat stuff box

  1. #1
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    Default Black Widow Spider found in my garage right next to my boat stuff box


    I was rooting around in my garage this fall and noticed a new web that looks rather haphazard in shape. I recognized that web design from watching the discovery channel on tv. They did a show on spiders and the black widow was the topic of the show along with other poisonous critters such as black mombas, King Cobra's, Sea snakes, Poisonous counch shellfish or snails that attack, scorpions, and brown recluse spiders just to name a few animals that were featured on the show.

    When I looked closer there she was. A beautiful full grown Female Black Widow Spider sitting between my box of boat stuff and my metal ramps that I store on the garage floor next to the wall. I have installed that Pegboard stuff 8' X 4' Sections over the painted drywall in the garage. I find the peg board nice to hang stuff on and it protects the dry wall from damage. But the numerous holes in the peg board makes excellent hiding places for spiders and wasps freqent my garage and like to make homes in behind the pegboard. They hunt the spiders and feed them to their young.

    This black widow could have made a big guy like me double over in pain if he had got her fangs in my fingers. I got the bug spray out and gave her a few squirts and then stepped back. The next day I found here on the floor dead right below where she had her nest. Those spiders are hard to kill even with raid unless you give them a good solid shot and you hit them square on. I read that if you just spray the area that that won't kill them. She was guarding a couple of egg sacks and I sprayed them real good also.

    If you are getting ready to do any spring cleaning it may pay to look out for spider webs that look unorganized and just haphard. They remind me of a ball of cotton candy unless much less dense. So if you find some spider webs that look like this check around carefully with a long stick and see if you don't find a black wider spider somewhere around the web. They are pretty seculive but this one was only about 1' away from where I got though the garage every time I leave or enter the house though the garage.

    I hope I got all her eggs before they hatched out. This is the first time I have found a black widow in my house or garage. I have looked for them in my parents old garage and dad use to catch and raise them in a cigar box covered with a screen mesh. Now that I found this one it makes me careful when I got out into the garage and start looking for stuff on the shelfs or in boxes along the floor. I went out to walmart just last week and got plastic storage boxes that have lids that seam them shut. I am going out to get another 19" deep one today. I need one for my camping tent stakes that won't fit in my rubber maid storage box. I can't get the lid on the rubber maid box to shut as the tent stakes are too long and stick out of the box.
    Regards,

    Moose1am

  2. #2
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    MOOSE-YA REKON MOTHER NATURE WAS TRYIN TO GET EVEN FOR CATCHIN TO MANY CRAPPIE?? JUST KIDDIN - GLAD YOU WERENT BIT!! I HATE SPIDERS,SNAKES ECT[i think thats an old jim stafford song?] GOOD FISHIN TO YA & HOPE YOU GOT EM ALL!!! DENNIS
    Good Fishin To Ya!! Dennis Dale Hollow Crappie www.dalehollowcrappie.4t.com

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    Default one time at band camp

    Moose you need to get out more often :D Thanks for the heads up though
    I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin' and hook up with them later.

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    I remember that song. It was one of my favorite songs. That one and Uncle Albert and the one about the guys drinking whisky and rhy. Those were the days that I was out in the sun lifeguarding at the local swimming hole. Lots of good looking girls in two piece bikinies. Those were some good days back in 1968 though 1974.
    Ole Jim didn't have too many hits but that spider and snakes song was a fun one.


    Quote Originally Posted by DENNIS BOWERS
    MOOSE-YA REKON MOTHER NATURE WAS TRYIN TO GET EVEN FOR CATCHIN TO MANY CRAPPIE?? JUST KIDDIN - GLAD YOU WERENT BIT!! I HATE SPIDERS,SNAKES ECT[i think thats an old jim stafford song?] GOOD FISHIN TO YA & HOPE YOU GOT EM ALL!!! DENNIS
    Regards,

    Moose1am

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    Moose I lived in No. California for several years and my garage and outbuilding were a breeding ground for Black Widows. I found so many that it was just a normal thing.

    Once when my niece was visting she was bitten. We had warned everyone about these, you couldn't keep up with the extermination in the outbuildings. She was about 14 years old and healthy but we rushed her to the hospital. Pretty sick kid for about 3 days. But recovered without problems.

    If your young, old or sick that spider can do a number on you.
    "You should have been here yesterday!"

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    Moose

    While growing up on a farm we had a one holer outhouse that we would check for spider webs before using. Sometimes we would see the shiny black widow spider on the web below the seat opening. The proceedure then was to find a stick to swipe around the opening to knock down the web before using. Also saw many Brown recluse spiders around the farm.

    This conjurs up memories of the old Monkey Wards cataloge kept out there to tear pages out of incase one ran out of the good paper on the rolls. Also the necessity of brushing show off the seat in the winter time.

    We lived there until my teenage years. All this was the norm to us kids growing up-- yet both of my parents grew up in houses with indoor plumbing. Ain't life funny.

    Guess this thread probably belongs on the Off topic section.
    “There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism—by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.” Ayn Rand

  7. #7
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    Thumbs up

    :D
    Quote Originally Posted by Moose1am
    I remember that song. It was one of my favorite songs. That one and Uncle Albert and the one about the guys drinking whisky and rhy. Those were the days that I was out in the sun lifeguarding at the local swimming hole. Lots of good looking girls in two piece bikinies. Those were some good days back in 1968 though 1974.
    Ole Jim didn't have too many hits but that spider and snakes song was a fun one.
    YEP-THE LATE 60"S-EARLY 70"S,LIFE WAS ALOT EASIER OF COURSE I WAS A LOT YOUNGER TOO! LOST INNOCENCE AN ALL THAT GOOD STUFF!! GOOD FISHIN TO YA[and thanks for the trip down memory lane]!!DENNIS
    Good Fishin To Ya!! Dennis Dale Hollow Crappie www.dalehollowcrappie.4t.com

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    Well Yesterday I found another radio station that plays songs from the 1960's 1970's and 1980's. There may be some songs from the 1950's in there too.

    We had one station that played the oldies last summer but that station changed it's format and went to country western now. The old station that played the oldies from the 60 and 70's didn't have a very good selection of records and they played a lot of them over and over again to fill the air time

    The new station that I found yesterday actually plays a lot more different songs from the old days.

    Suddenly I am starting to hear myself and I sound a lot like the old timers that talked about the good old days when I was still in my teens and early 20's. We use to laugh at those old guys back then but not anymore.

    If we get lucky we all grow to be an older person sooner or later. If we are not lucky we leave this earth a bit early.

    Give me some more oldies please! LOL

    BTW 105 FM is my Evansville Newburgh IN station of choice now. I still listen to Kiss and WIKY at times.

    Just got back from Walmart. Before I left to get out of the house I got out my book on "The Freshwater Fishes" by Samuel Eddy. This book is used to key out or ID different fresh water fish. It's 285 pages long and the only problem is that all the pictures and diagrams of the fish are in black and white and not in color. It was a text book that I had to buy when I took I Ichthyology Class at Purdue University. It's ISBN # is 0-697-04817-7 for the paper back version.

    I had to use this book and a magnifying glass or binocular stereo microscope to identify two diffenent minnows. But then I digress as I always to here.

    I use the book to ID the small baby catfish that I captured last summer at the pit I fish. I had been going over to this strip pit in the new F&W area and wading along the edge by the gravel launch ramp area and catching small minnows with my dip net. I added a 6ft long 1/2" OD pvc pole to the dip net by taping the dip net onto the end of the pcv tubing or pole. This allowed me to reach out farther and catch more minnows. I would bring the minnows back home and feed them to my captive crappie. I have had the crappie in my aquarium since Oct 2003 now and this coming Oct they will have been in my aquarium for 2 full years. They are growing and eating lots of minnows. While netting minnows last summer I noticed a black fish swimming along the edge of the shoreline in and amoung some green filametous algae that was growing in the very shallow water by the lakes edge. I dipped the net into the green algae where I thought the fish would be an captured this small baby 1" long catfish. I eventually caught 4 of these baby catfish last summer. I gave most of them away to a kid and kept one to bring home for the aquarium. I added him to the aquarium with the crappie and the crappie got a lesson in how NOT to eat a baby catfish with spines. LOL I saw one of the crappie try to suck the catfish in his mouth and almost immediatly the crappie spit the baby catfish back out. That was the last time they tried to eat the baby catfish. The catfish still was not having anything to do with the bigger crappie and he soon was found hiding in the top corner of the aquarium behind the plastic tubes that come off the underwater gravel filter. These tubes rise up to near the surface where I placed a power filter head ontop of the tube end. The power filter draws water up from the bottom of the gravel though the tubing and back out into the top of the aquarium where air is added to the water stream. It make the underwater filters work and also aerates the aquarium in the process. So the baby catfish had a good place to rest and hide from the larger fish. Here he stayed all summer and all winter long. Now this 1" long baby catfish has grown to about 3" or maybe 4" long. He has tripled in size for sure. Now this is the strange thing. I never fed this guy anything other than some pellets that are fed to tropical fish. He had nothing to eat all winter long basically, yet he grew. Today I watch this baby catfish that is not almost a year old catch and eat 1" long chub minnows. The Catfish can now eat at least two of these minnows per hour. He is one tough little fish to make it this long. I wish that my crappie would grow so fast. Only thing that I can figure is that he ate the detritus in the gravel to survive. Now I understand why peole that farm fish choose catfish. They can survive better and grow fast. An most farmers will tell you that growth rates are critical to getting animals to market faster. This is why they feed their livestock vitamins and give them drugs to prevent disease. Antibiotics are put in the feed these days to help the farm animals growth rates and survival rates.

    Anyway I decided that this baby catfish was getting big enough to Identify. I keyed him out in the book and identified him as a Yellow Bullhead Catfish. Ictalurus natalis (Lesueur) The key was his Adipose fin free , not fused to the caudal fin, having more than 16 rays in his anal fin, and having barbles under the jaw that were not pigmented. The white barbles under his jaw was the easy part. Those were easy to see and make the identification rather easy. Counting the anal fin's rays was the hard part as I didn't want to take him out of the tank so I estimated the lenght of the fin and how many rays were actually in his anal fin. I could verify this by taking him out of the aquaruim and actually counting the rays but that is too much work. Also I would have to look inside his mouth to check the teeth out to further verifiy the ID. Band of teeth in the upper jaw without any backward lateral extensions is one of the features of the Bullheads. There are several variety of bullhead catfish in the book. Teh yellow bullhead, the flat bullhead, the green bullhead, the brown bullhead and the black bullhead. This catfish has a NON forked tail which is one of the first things that the key book looks at. This fish has a non forked tail or rounded caudal fin. If the caudal fin had been deeply forked it would have led me to the blue catfish , white catfish, channel catfish or the headwater and Yaqui catfish. It was bugging me for some time that I didn't know what kind of catfish I had in my aquarium. Now I finally know. . I also know that he eats a lot of my minnows. His mouth is barely big enough to fit a 1" long minnow in there. And he has a hard time catching the minnows until they swim right in front of his nose. Then he can inhale them and catch them either head first or tail first. If he catches a minnow tail first he will spit it back out about half way and then turn the minnow around and grab it again by the minnows head and then swallow it.

    Bottom line here is if you are fishing with minnows and are getting bites where you can't get the hook set you may have a baby 3" long catfish (yellow Bullhead or another small baby catfish playing with the mnnows. It would be hard to get the hook set as the hook would have a hard time getting into these little fishs mouth. This small catfish had the beadest little eyes that I have ever seen. At times he appears to be blind but then again he can see me walking into the aquarium room and he gets all worked up just like the warmouth sunfish that I have in the aquarium. All four fish know when it's feeding time and start swimming toward the glass to get a better look at me when I walk into the room with a minnow bucket in hand. LOL.

    It's much more fun to have native fish in the aquarium than it was to have those small tropical fish.
    Quote Originally Posted by DENNIS BOWERS
    :D
    YEP-THE LATE 60"S-EARLY 70"S,LIFE WAS ALOT EASIER OF COURSE I WAS A LOT YOUNGER TOO! LOST INNOCENCE AN ALL THAT GOOD STUFF!! GOOD FISHIN TO YA[and thanks for the trip down memory lane]!!DENNIS
    Regards,

    Moose1am

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    Hey Moose... Here in the desert SW we live side by side with millions of BW's. Best way we have found to kill them and all the eggs in the sack is to spray them with MEK from your local Home Depot. No young will make it out of the egg alive and the mother will shrivel and die almost instantly. Go looking for them around dusk with a flashlight so there are in range and enjoy!
    Cheers...
    Last edited by Jumping Cholla Jigs; 03-13-2005 at 07:48 PM.

  10. #10
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    Brown recluse spiders are more of a problem around here. They usually don't kill you but can really mess you up, often leaving a large dead area on your skin.

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