spider

[kip_w]

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Yesterday I saw what Mom would call "a widow black spider" in the kitchen sink and caught it up with a jar lid. It promptly hopped off back into the sink. I tried once more and got it onto the floor. "Don't you have any spider sense?" I asked it as it scuttled away.

This morning I looked in the sink and there was the drowned body of what looked like the same spider. You can't win.
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Comments

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

When I opened the door Friday to bring in the paper, a large cricket came in. I kept telling it that the kitties would eat it; it should run back outdoors! But it didn't, and then there were only cricket legs.

[meggins.livejournal.com]

Wow. I like spiders, ubt I'm not sure I'd try to help a black widow. Hubby definitely wouldn't. He'd kill it in a heartbeat.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

It was just a little black spider. Years ago, someone pointed out something similar and one of us kids asked if it was a black widow spider. "No," Mom said, employing baby talk, "It's a widdo' black spider."

My oldest sister tried to keep black widow spiders in cages a couple of times, but they always died.

Dad was bitten by a black widow spider one time. He was sleeping in a mummy bag in the living room because his back hurt and he didn't want to keep Mom awake with his tossing. He felt something stick him and groggily picked it off, dimly thinking it was a burr. A bit later he woke with throbbing pain and turned on the light. There was a dead black widow on the floor by the bag. At this point, the household started waking up. He had a large red swelling area around the bite. My oldest sister made him put ice on it. They were calling the emergency room and the doctor's office, and not reaching the doctor. It was decided he'd go to the E.R. and get an antivenin shot which would make him sick but save his life. At that point, it was noticed that the red area was now the size of a quarter and apparently getting smaller. At this point, the medical advice was to keep the ice on it, so he did, and that was more or less it.

Except for the awful epilog.

A few days later, Dad was telling some a couple we knew about the incident, concluding with the fact that the bite had completely healed, but he still had backaches. The husband turned to his wife and said, "His back is worse than his bite."

So we killed him.