Black Widows

I have a major problem with bugs as you know. I have learned to deal with the big water bug/roaches that we get. I have learned to deal with the ants, which are now gone (knock on wood). But, spiders are on a whole different level.

We have had a ton of tiny white spiders outside on our back patio. These little guys are making tons of webs. If we leave anything out there a web will inevitably be on it in the morning. I tried to look up white spider on google and nothing came up that resembled these little guys. I emailed my homeschool friends, knowing that one of them will know what in the hell these are. One of them emailed back that it was a Coppertone Spider ~ HAHA, yeah, I didn't get it until they pointed it out for me. (personally, I don't have any sense of humor when it comes to spiders.) Another friend's husband said he thought they might be baby Black Widows. It sounded plausible to me because we had just killed a big momma two days before that was hanging on our screen door.

Now, you have to understand that there are tons of these little suckers outside my patio door. Of course I start searching them on Google. I have to know if the friend is right. After finding this picture from here:

I think he might be right. Spiders totally freak me out. I don't like them. I get a really strong feeling to let them just have the house, I will move. Obviously not a rational thought, but that's how I feel.

I woke up at 1:00 am imagining these little suckers getting into the house somehow and hiding until they turn into this:

I didn't get back to sleep until 3:30 am that night. The next day, I made hubby go and buy a whole bunch of bug spray. I decided that he was going to go outside and spray every single web we could find and along the house. He did, he really didn't have much of choice if he wanted to sleep. Every web he sprayed in the backyard had about 5 to 10 of the little suckers. They are now dead. I am still not happy about all of this because there is still the thought that if one, just one, of these got into the house that one day it is going to look like the ugly bitch above and one of us is going to find it somewhere inside the house.

Next week hubby is going to pressure wash the entire house, patio, wall around the house, and everything else I can tell him to. We have to wash away any that might be lingering. We will then spray the entire house all over again. I am determined to win this fight.

If you would like to learn a little something about these nasty little things here is a Wikipedia page on them: BLACK WIDOWS Just be careful to not read if you easily get creeped out like I do.