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>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.
>