Subject: OT Critter Trouble
Author: Suzanne D.Date: 18 Jul
So we've had our little problems with giant monster roaches in the last
month or two. No biggie. Roaches don't hurt nobody, and these are outdoor
summer roaches that will go away when the weather changes anyway. And maybe
now and then we get the occasional earwig or cricket; nothing too wild. All
controllable with a squirt of Fantastik, if we even want to bother killing
them at all.
Today, we noticed a few daddy longlegs up near the ceiling in the living
room. Then we saw a few more. So for fun the kids and I started to go
around the house upstairs to count the spiders! At the end of the run, we
came up with 25. One in the bathtub, and the rest on the walls near the
ceilings. Mainly daddy longlegs; a few common house spiders. We laughed
about it, and I said I should go downstairs to see what the population was
down there. But I didn't bother, and soon forgot about it.
Oh no, that's not the critter trouble I was talking about. Keep reading.
Tonight (Wednesday), I happened to be downstairs for some reason or other,
and glanced toward the window well. (Let me interject here that our
"downstairs" is the finished basement, where our family room is. We rarely
go down there now that Ewan has trouble going up and down stairs, so it's
mainly a place for Karrde to make his wine. The two family room windows are
set into "window wells," which are big hollow areas on the outside of the
window. You have probably seen them before--they are your basic nice
basement windows.)
Welp, as I glanced over to the window, I spotted a huge black widow spider!
It was in the well, so it was technically OUTSIDE of the house, but still a
little too close for comfort. I figured I'd keep an eye on it over the next
few days, and maybe get something to spray it with soon. As I was thinking
this, I glanced to a different area in the same well and saw...
...another huge black widow spider. Two. Well, this could be a problem.
Especially since this one had somehow made her way to the area between the
window and the screen. Yep, should we get the urge to open the window,
there you go.
Then I noticed the egg sacs. Lots of egg sacs. Big, huge egg sacs, like
3/4 of an inch across.
Then I noticed a smaller spider, inside. On the windowsill itself, where
you often find spiders. A small spider, dark brown, with some white
markings on it...but the exact same shape as a black widow. And in a ragged
web, just like a black widow. And with some exoskeletons right next to
it--two or three of them. Meaning it had shed several times recently.
Meaning it was a juvenile. Meaning that it didn't necessarily have to look
like its adult form. Meaning it was probably a young black widow.
So off to the internet I go, to look up pictures of juvenile black widders.
Turns out we have a young female, right in the house. WELL! I dispatched
of THAT one quite quickly with a ton of Fantastik. It usually doesn't work
very well on spiders, but I drowned the poor thing. So maybe it didn't die
from the Fantastik itself, but from drowning. I don't know, and I don't
care.
Then I went to the other window. In the well, two more huge black widows.
Maybe more; it was hard to see in the dark. And more egg sacs. I think I
counted about a dozen egg sacs altogether between the two windows.
I went back to the first window, and saw ANOTHER young spider INSIDE the
house, and yes, having done my research, it was a young female black widow.
Again, I obliterated this one with Fantastik too.
So needless to say, tomorrow (Thursday) I am going to buy some heavy-duty
poison. Yes, you read that right. I'd never use Raid on something silly
like crickets or roaches--they don't hurt anyone, so poison is overkill.
But black widows? In my house? Oh yeah. I am going to read the labels of
various insecticides and find one that does particularly well against black
widows, and figure out some way to get it down there. I don't want to get
too close from outside (damn, what if there are more further away from the
window--more toward the outside?), and I obviously don't want to open the
windows either--the double whammy of letting poison inside the house AND the
spider(s) being on the inside of the screen! So I have no idea what I am
going to do, but six black widows and twelve egg sacs are a little too much,
even for me.
Get out yer gas mask!
--S.
P.S. In addition to all the spiders, there was a medium-sized praying mantis
in one of the window wells. Karrde asked which would win THAT fight! I'm
inclined to say the mantis, but I'd still sacrifice one mantis to poison if
I need to.
