Black Widow Spider found...reported....

Found a true black widow spider in my car garage (and to think I park in there with my roof down on nice days!!)
Called pest control and they were super excited to see this spider. I guess you have to be a pest control specialist to see the "joy" in finding a rare poisonous spider , lol! Anyway, this BW spider is very unusual around here in Cranbrook and she was VERY large for a BW. Figures that it was at my house. Because our kids have asthma and allergies and I have been known to have severe reactions to mosquito and wasp stings and my husband is just getting over a heart attack....we are having the entire house 'swept' and will continue to do an annual upkeep. The bite of a BW is/can be deadly to some and even more serious to those of us who have wierd immune systems or chronic disease.

So I guess we all shake shoes, clothes, jackets and bedsheets for a spell. Hopefully I can shake that "something is crawling on me" feeling sooner than that!

We don't know how it got here or if she has been around awhile. It is entirely possible there are more since she seemed to be setting up for winter boarding. Thinking maybe it came with the boxes of fruit my MIL brought to me from the Okanagan just a couple of weeks ago.

ick! i am so itchy

ewww getting the willies reading this. I saw one in Victoria when I was quite young, I am not really afraid of spiders, but a BW, yikes!!
Good you are getting everything cleaned up.

It is good you recognized it, if I remember my entomology correctly they have a red hour glass marking on their abdomen.
My brother lives in Australia and almost all their spiders are poisonous, you can't garden there without wearing gloves and shoes. We are pretty lucky to only have the occasional black widow and the brown recluse which as the name implies is rarely seen.

No way! I didn't think we had them in Canada! Ach, that's scary. Hiw do they make it through the winter?

Might be time to take the No Pest strip out of the hen house and hang it in the garage for a while! Spiders....harsh!

We have a beach on the island here that is well visited, but not as well known for being one of the most poisonous due to the population of recluse, black widow and hobos I think.

Recluse are brutally poisonous (my horse has a scar the size of my finger) and very common, as are the black widows (on the Island anyway). they are beautiful in their own creepy way.

I wonder if they will be more common in the interior now...reported bites are not common though.

Black widows have been found in our area, although I have never seen any.

We have found Black Widows living in an old pile of bricks we have. The caretaker at school has a couple he has found that he keeps as "pets" in his office too.
I thought they were quite common although I wish they weren't. I am not a spider lover.

nuthatch333 wrote:It is good you recognized it, if I remember my entomology correctly they have a red hour glass marking on their abdomen.
My brother lives in Australia and almost all their spiders are poisonous, you can't garden there without wearing gloves and shoes. We are pretty lucky to only have the occasional black widow and the brown recluse which as the name implies is rarely seen.

Yep, the spiders down there make the Black Widow look very tame. Their close cousin, the Red Back, is all over but not as poisonous as most. The Funnel Web is the scariest as it is very large and will actually rear on its back legs and push its fangs at you. I shudder just thinking of them.
I have a very bad fear of spiders and I really had to get over it a bit as there are so many down in Australia. The Huntsman is a very large spider, some the size of my hand, that often lives in houses and definately in barns and sheds. They are nonpoisonous, but everywhere and for a spider phob like me they took a lot of getting used to. They are non web spinners and actually hunt their prey by running them down and leaping on them. They move FAST!
This post has brought back many memories, oh and by the way, I always gardened with bare hands and bare feet. You get tough when you live in Australia for a while. Spiders and snakes......heh.

Really not enjoying reading this right now! I have a bite on my hip the diameter of a baseball and another nasty one on the back of my neck- and I have no idea what bit me!

Keep a close eye on it Susan or get it checked out. Tigger's spider bite started as a HUGE swelling, it took days before it started opening at the bite point. I don't know if they can do much but seeing what I did I would take myself to the clinic to see what they say.

And yes, I'm a spider phobe but here I am talking spiders!!

eeeeewwwwwwww

I've got bit several times by spiders, starts out as a bump sometimes has a bruise and the next day for about a week or two it's so itchy you can hardly atand it, I put calamyl lotion , after bite , apple cider vinager, not a good idea, trying to get rid of the itch. Then after about 2 weeks it stops itching and goes away. Thsnkfully I've never meet a BW

Eew. Gross, gag, vomit. I'm definitely a spidey phob, and living in Australia for a year did nothing to help desensitize me! Giddyup, I looked up recluse spider since I hadn't heard of them before.

Picture this: home alone, snuggled into bed, watching an episode of tv before bed and I decide to log in to WCPS. I see this thread and look up said spider: "very common in north America ", "often bites humans when trapped in a piece of clothing the person is putting on or if the person rolls over or otherwise trod the spider while sleeping. " Egad!!!!! Continue with "use of pesticide causes neurology symptoms (here I'm thinking I've found a winner) which has an adverse effect of causing unprovoked aggression " GOOD GRIEF!!!! what is this? A devil spider?

And with that I'm off to get out of bed, check beneath the blankets, sheets and pillows for spiders, I swear I can feel something tickeling my leg. Yuck!

There was a nest of them under our shed in Kelowna, DH torched them

He also killed one here just the other day, it had the red mark.

Ok well I had nightmares last night. I dreamed I found two spiders (they looked like little lobsters and one bit me- had to go to the hospital and get a shot of epi or antidote or something but the needle was the size you would use on a horse! Lovely. Did I mention I don't watch horror movies? (I have to admit I don't even like the creepy avatars )

Sorry for the itchy crawly feelings (we all got them here too). Funny, teen boy who occupies the entire downstairs has tidied his room and picked things up off the floor. I am wearing shoes in my house and I can see DH looking up the ceilings and around doors, lol! Well Monday they will spray everywhere inside and out so we should be rather safe until next year.....

When I was growing up in Kelowna, we found several Black Widows over the years. Once was found by my littlest brother, then only 6 or 7, slowly crawling up the carpeted staircase in our house! The thing with these spiders is that they are very slow moving, and actually not agressive. The trouble comes when they are set up in piles of junk, old sheds, any hidey hole and we disturb them by pinching a leg or almost squishing them, and then they bite in defence. I remember going to Bear Creek Park across Okanagan Lake and the Park Warden there told the crowd about how he was turning over a rock in a pile and had pinched the leg of a BW Spider. Was bitten on end of finger and it was really bad.

As spiders go, I am still WAY more freaked out about the HUGE wolf spiders that were always in our Kelowna house. Some were so big that their legs would span the bottom inside of a pickle jar!!!! (Would catch the biggest ones) They were like greased lighting, and as I think about them I am getting goosebumps on my legs. Sometimes we would wake up with tell tale spider bites (two holes close together)!!!! I am sure this is what has caused my arachnaphobia. Nasty, nasty, nasty.

We have them around the Nelson area too. One was found in my son's school gym last year. Also, my husband unwittingly slept in the same bed as one. We went to Lillooet last year for a business trip. Woke up in the morning to find a really large BW nest/web in the footboard of the hotel bed. He sent me pictures of it - I told him that was almost cheating He disposed of it quickly because he still had another week in that room!

I still get shivers thinking about it and I'm not the one who slept with it!!