Interesting find

[Topper]

Was browsing around a friend"s place today between shots to give the barrel time to cool.
Notice a plastic trash lid that looked like it had been laying there for a while.
Thought I might get me snake, but found this instead:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v342/Topper_1950/Black_Widow.jpg

[Crash_Corrigan]

I have a granddaddy black widow spider web and nest in the corner of my yard on an inside cinderblock wall. He has a hole on the bottom corner and I take great pleasure in relieving myself all over his web. He comes out really pissed and then I pi++ all over him. I have been doing this for months. He will not leave the area and it does not take much to entertain me as my life is so boring here in Vegas without a lot of cash. The highlight of the week is either smelting down scrounged ww's, casting boolits, reloading, cleaning guns or going to the range. Light entertainment is PO'ing the black widow.

[Jim]

Ya' better watch that, Crash. Ya' know that ol' sayin', "What goes around comes around".

[Bret4207]

This is way OT and maybe will make some uncomfortable, but why would evolution cause a poisonous spider to have a red "X" on it's back and rattle snakes to rattle? Whatever the reason, I wish poison ivy had blaze orange leaves and vines, deer ticks were fluorescent yellow, all poison snakes were bright blue, etc.

[sturf]

It's not a him; it's a her. And evolution didn't do it.

[joatmon]

The two most painfull days of my life were spent after sleeping with one of those.

[45nut]

The two most painfull days of my life were spent after sleeping with one of those.
Har,, why ya think they are called "widows"? Lot's of men have similar regrets after "one night stands" LOL

[fatnhappy]

Well..... Did you shoot it? :Fire:

[MT Gianni]

As with most spiders the web & spider both burn hot. A long nose lighter will clear the way when under a house full of cobwebs. I once had to light a space heater next to a kitchen stove where the owner, an older lady was amost blind. It was all grease coated and to get at the control knob I just touched the lighter to the edger of the web. 5 seconds later I had my hat off and was beating on the flames now headed for the living room carpet. I was able to answer "yep" a few seconds later to an "everything OK?".
I have a cat spider in the window well that looks to have a body 1" across or more but she will stay there and eat bugs as long as she wants. I burn all Black widows and egg sacs that I find if not in an area that will cause a flame up. Gianni.

[454PB]

I use to maintain an underground waste water treatment unit, and it was infested with Black Widows. They like to hide in dark places like that. Surprisingly, I got use to it after a while. Like rattlesnakes, the spiders don't want any more to do with you than you do with them. Unless you accidently pressed against one, the chances of getting bitten are small. They are not aggressive, and just want to be left alone.

[Swagerman]

My dad would be 107 years old today if he were alive.

When he was a young man, he was using an outdoor privey and got bit by one of those red X spiders. He liked to have died from it, it was touch and go but he pulled though.

Later on after he married my mom, we lived in an oil lease house with 2 acres of land. Dad had built an outdoor privy with hinged lid on the seat boards. He kept it clean of spiders by lighting rolled up newspapers burning the underboards and any cobwebs nearby.

I'm grateful he did.

We had no electricity or potable water to drink. Our radio was a big console job with 12 volt batterey...our sole source of intertainment.

Gas jets adorned the walls.

Drinking water came from an artesian well five miles from home. The nearby oil wells made the ground water unfit to drink.

Jim

[Scrounger]

It was a great time to be a kid, wasn't it? I grew up in similar circumstances, yet I consider my childhood far richer than what today's kids have.

[CT Kid]

I have heard of people paying up to fifty dollars for a black widow spider. The guys who are burning them up ought to check up on that!

[Swagerman]

That burning out black widow spiders happend in the early 40s. No one in our area then had $50 for a red X.

But it did save us from getting bit on the butty...or other places.

Scrounger, bet you had it with them dang red ants, the two types were: crawling and flying, bite the beeejeeebers out of you.

Then there was the cotton mouth black snakes you would encounter while running full tilt down a dirt trail...had to leap right over the squirming vermin and only 5 years old.

Best remembrence of those times, two older brothers and me went to the Canadian river to bring home a Christmas tree. It started to snow, then it decided to get nasty and turn into a blizzard. It was so bad my brothers had me walking in the middle under the tree hanging on with one hand. We made it to an oil field warehouse shack, hold up there until the snow storm slacked off some.

It was really cold in there...but we finally made it home.

Jim

[Boz330]

Who is paying $50 for those puppies. I killed about a grand worth of those ******** last year. I have never seen a Black Widow in KY until about 4 years ago. My shop is infested with the things and I gas the place a couple times a year and they still come back. I beleive in live and let live but when there are that many around the odds are that someone is going to get bit and I don't need the grief.

Bob

[Topper]

Har,, why ya think they are called "widows"? Lot's of men have similar regrets after "one night stands" LOL
Funny Ken.
Some one tell me how I can get $50.00/widow and I'll start collecting them for sure.:-)

[Newtire]

Funny to see this post when just last weekend at the range this happened to me. Being the first one at the outdoor pistol range, I opened the picnic cooler they store their sandbags in and there was a big ol Black Widow on top of the bags. My instinct was to smash it so I did! I used to live at a place where we had an outhouse and one day went in and was getting ready to sit down when I noticed some legs sticking out from under the seat. I lifted it up and there was a scorpion. I went out in the woods and dug a hole!

[Swagerman]

Graffiti written on the outhouse wall: "It does no good to squat with you're feet on the seat, our crabs can jump up to six feet."

Author unknown.

Jim :mrgreen:

[schutzen]

Boz330, It's time to go shopping with Mother Nature. Find an Osage Orange Tree, commonly called a Hedgeapple Tree. Pick several 5 gallon buckets of the hedgeapples. Toss 5-10 around the dark cornors of your shop. Hang the remainder up in an onion sack. Add a few more hedgeapples to the shop every month and throw out the dried up ones. You won't have a spider problem. Ya, it's an old wives tale, BUT IT WORKS!

[Boz330]

Shutzen,
No shortage of those around here. I've got 3 or 4 trees within spitting distance of the building. Don't those things get pretty messy though, at least the ones under the trees do. The ones in the onion bag would tend to dry but just throwing them in the corners, I would think that they would just rot. And my office is one of the affected areas.
Damn I should have thought to warn the FAA inspectors that I had an infestation a couple weeks ago when they were here, maybe they wouldn't have stayed so long.

Thanks I might have to give that a try.

Bob

[omgb]

I've got more black widows than Carter had little pills. Some of them aren't even black, they're a dark brown or spotted brown and balck but widows they are. They turn up even inside the house. Speaking of that, my neighbor had a scorpion on the kitchen floor the other day. This area is high desert and all manner of critters thrive here.

[Scrounger]

Apparently you can buy an electronic repellent. Here are some links to ideas:

http://www.richters.com/newdisplay.cgi?page=./QandA/Growing/20060216-2.html&cart_id=6658758.5715

http://www.northernsafety.com/cart/cart.cfm?PROD_NUM=252%2D14598&Action=01&OPC=GP252INSP03

[Boz330]

$5 for the product $30 to ship it, bad as powder and primers. Meanwhile I've got the Osage oranges out back, only have to walk about 30 yd.

[Edward429451]

I remember years ago, hopping down into a ladys crawlspace to fix a leak on some pipes and it was just packed with cobwebs. Out in the prarie with no trees (sticks) around to clear the cobwebs with. So I had my self igniting torch with me and figured I'd burn me a path through them. One touch of that flame and her whole crawlspace lit up as it went from wall to wall at the joist line burning the cobwebs. It was so fast that all I could do is watch in horror and wonder if I should go get em out of the house now or maybe God would shine his light on me somehow.

ABout 10 seconds later it all died down and was dark again. I made my repair and told them I cleared their cobwebs too. The lady said her husband wouldn't fix the leak because he seen how many cobwebs there were in thhe crawlspace.

That was the longest 10 seconds of my life!

[Swagerman]

You must have pi$$ed off a lot of spiders, you pyromaniac. :mrgreen:

But you did good...burn 'em out and be safe.

So, the nice ole lady didn't tell you about the mess of cobwebs did she. :mrgreen:

Jim

[beemer]

Had a neighbor that got bit the other place, said he would'a been proud if it hadn't almost killed him. We burned them out with newspaper. If it was cold you could sit down before the fire went out.

One old farmer used the path every mourning before daylight. He didn't take a light ,just took off in the dark. Some of the kids had picked up the john and set it behind the hole and hid in the woods to enjoy the festivities.

beemer

[Slowpoke]

My cousin lives in Chandler AZ, she has around 12 acre's and has irrigation rights from the Salt River project once a month she can flood irrigate her place about 12 inches deep by opening a gate on the concrete ditch at the back of the property, needless to say her house has one of the worst infestations of scorpions I have ever seen, I refuse to sleep there, she kills several everyday, I changed out a Florissant light fixture in the garage for her and there was four in it.

good luck

[Lucky Joe]

Boz330, It's time to go shopping with Mother Nature. Find an Osage Orange Tree, commonly called a Hedgeapple Tree. Pick several 5 gallon buckets of the hedgeapples. Toss 5-10 around the dark cornors of your shop. Hang the remainder up in an onion sack. Add a few more hedgeapples to the shop every month and throw out the dried up ones. You won't have a spider problem. Ya, it's an old wives tale, BUT IT WORKS!


I don't know why but yup Hedgeapples do work.

[lathesmith]

Black Widows are rare in this area, we have a few but the wasps and dirt dobbers take care of most of them. However, we have an abundance of Brown Recluse spiders, they are very thick at times. This has been one of the worst years I have ever seen for these darned spiders. One thing for sure, they do have a tendency to keep you alert and on your toes!
Lathesmith