The Spider

It sounds like you have a new pet. Out here black widows are very common. When I see one in or on my home, I spray it with whatever brand of arachnid-be-dead I happen to have handy until it stops twitching. It's nothing personal; I have two cats and a dog, and a black widow bite means a trip to the hospital for me or my wife and it could kill the cats and put the dog in a world of hurt.

Any response here would degrade the charm of the inital post. I'll simply say: Keep it up.

Neat!

Yes. Otherwise, my response would be similar to Mills'. We also have black widows in NM. The others, I treat with dignity and respect.

From the great Loren Eisley, _The Spider_

"It happened on a rainy morning in the West. He (Eisley) had come up a long gulch looking for fossils and there, just at eye level, lurked a huge yellow and black orb spider, whose web was moored to the tall spears of buffalo grass at the edge of the arroyo. It was her universe, and her senses did not extend beyond the lines and spokes of the great wheel she inhabited. Her extended claws could feel every vibration throughout the delicate structure. She knew the tug of wind, the fall of a raindrop, the flutter of a trapped moth's wing. Down one spoke of the web ran a stout ribbon of gossamer on which she could hurry out to investigate her prey.

Being curious about what might happen, Eisley took a pencil from his pocket and touched a strand of the web. Immediately, there was a response. The web, plucked by its menacing occupant, began to vibrate until it was a blur. Anything that had brushed claw or wing against that amazing snare would be thoroughly entrapped. As the vibrations slowed, he could see the owner, as he called her, fingering her guidelines for signs of struggle. A pencil point was an intrusion into the universe for which no precedent existed. Spider was circumscribed by spider ideas; its universe was spider universe. All outside was irrational, extraneous, at best raw material for spider. And, as he proceeded on his way along the gully, like a vast impossible shadow, he realized that in the world of spider, he did not exist."

Source (one of many)

Why do you kill the animal that annoys you? It was only acting with it's animal instinct, and is no less innocent than the animal that did not annoy you. You might as well just kill them all.

Not just animals that annoy, but also animals that taste good. There's no reason to waste time and energy killing animals that neither annoy nor taste good. :wink:

Hey Mills, I think your cats are safe. Spiders won't bite 'em. I saw a doco that pitted a tiny white kitten against a Trapdoor spider (way deadly)....wouldn't bite the kitten though.

(I may be very, very wrong about this...anyone?)

Since cats like to play with arachnids (and occasionally eat them), and since arachnids don't tend to like being played with by cats (or eaten by them on occasion), I shall continue in my assumption that black widows are a potential danger to my cats and, thus, continue to spray them until they stop twitching whenever I might find them in or around my home.

I usher spiders outside, or into the basement. Even the black widows who lived in GA and NM with me.

I do kill blood suckers though - mosquitos, ticks, fleas - those creatures are only put on earth to be disgusting and obnoxious (ok, so, they have other uses, sue me).

Also, I agree that black widows prolly won't harm your critters, especially the cats. They might get violently ill if they eat one though.

If it's in my house, it dies. It wouldn't hesitate to kill me (or try) if I were in it's home.