This week when spraying for bugs, our "pest control man" (that would be Matt!) found several black widows in our back yard, as well as across the street on the bank of mailboxes for our neighborhood. Eww!!Apparently, this is the time of year that they come out, after the monsoon rains. Here's a photo of the first black widow we found this week. That would be when we thought there was only one. Imagine that the body is 1/2 inch long, then add the length of the legs onto that mental picture. Nice, huh?
Needless to say, the kids aren't hanging around outside barefoot or anything like that....
4 comments:
Yuck! We will pray hard that none of you get bit by one of these nasty things. Love ya, :)
Mom
I canNOT stand black widows. I seriously had never encountered them until we lived down here in the south. I am so thankful that Ben is smart about bugs, and while he isn't afraid of bugs, he knows which ones to not mess around with. Black widows and fire ants are a couple of them. Rob has killed nearly 7 or 8 of them, and the one he killed last week was on Ben's playground in the back yard. Ben had kept talking about a spider web, but we figured it was just a benign one. Rob went out to zap it, and it didn't die right away, but another spider came up behind it and bit it in the butt! ben thinks this is funny. I never remember seeing any in the valley, though. Or a scorpion, which I know is probably an anamoly for me.
Jenny~
Ooh, I never thought about finding black widows & their webs on kids' play equipment!!
Our back yard is configured in such a way that we can't really get a swingset or play set back there. So it hasn't been an issue for us.
It's amazing what kids can learn about what not to mess with, isn't it? When we lived by Lake Superior, our kids knew not to go past the top of the sand dune without an adult.
Our friends who live on a farm were nervous when they came to our house, because of the lake and its dangers for their kids. But when we were at their house, we were somewhat nervous because our kids weren't used to electric fences and other farm things that could hurt them. Funny, huh?
I haven't seen any alive scorpions here yet. When we went to South Mountain, we saw a dead one in the restroom. Matt says at one of his clinics that they have scorpion issues. But they put out traps or something and it's not such a big deal. Plus most kinds aren't deadly.
I remember thinking when we lived in the cold white north that at least one of the advantages was that it was too COLD for any nasty critters!!
We're getting used to it, though. We have friends who live out in the desert and have learned to kill rattlesnakes. One of their young daughters has a "rattle" collection, too!
Yikes! we have those here too, and Adam has seen quite a few crawling under peoples houses...thankfully they are not too agressive.
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