Re: black widows

**"* <t*@earthlink.net>**

> I suggest going through your garden to look for places where black widows 
> might like to hide, then squishing them when you see them (with a shoe or 
> piece of wood, but NOT with your hand, for obvious reasons).

Okay, I can't resist sharing my favorite black widow story.

    I was working in the CYA, teaching landscape gardening at the California 
Youth Authority, where half of my students were in for murder, and the other 
half were, what I called, "bad shots." All of 'em were hard core 
gangbangers.
  We had a number of big greenhouses and one day I asked one of my students 
to climb under the big main bench and weed it, as it was getting real weedy 
under there. He ( a big black fellow with lots of tattoos and muscles) had 
been under there for awhile doing a pretty good job of it when I came back 
in the greenhouse and told him to climb on out from under there.
   He got out from under there, all dirty from the job, and as we were 
standing there talking about it, I suddenly saw one of the biggest damn 
black widows I'd ever seen, and it was in his hair and it quickly climbed 
down right on to his cheek, on the left side of his face.
  I was afraid if I said anything he'd panic and get bit in the face or 
neck, so I just laid off and slapped the hell out him, slapped him a good 
one right upside his head.
   He, no big surprise, was plenty pissed and bunched up his fists, ready to 
fight me, but I told him, fast, what had happened. When I showed him the 
palm of my right hand, there was that big black widow, squashed right in the 
middle of it.
True story...can't make up stuff this good!

Tom

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Nan Sterman" <NSterman@PlantSoup.Com>
To: "Garden Writers -- GWL -- The Garden Writers Forum" 
<gardenwriters@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2012 7:19 PM
Subject: Re: [GWL] black widows

> Somehow missed the original query -
>
> In So Cal (San Diego area) black widows prefer dark, undisturbed places. 
> It would be unusual to come across them in the open, but if you have 
> places with nooks and crannies, you'll definitely find them.  I find them, 
> for example, in covered irrigation valve boxes, in cracks between bricks 
> or blocks in walls, in stacks of firewood, when I pull apart stacked plant 
> containers (plastic, ceramic, etc), in the undersides and rims of empty 
> buckets that I stack and store upside down. They LOVE our garage and my 
> toolshed, especially in corners or behind ledges where no one disturbs 
> them but they have access to their insect prey.
>
> I wouldn't worry about kids finding them in fruit or places like that 
> because, again, they avoid lit locations.  That said, if you have anything 
> stored near the fruit trees that the kids would likely be interested in 
> exploring, then be sure to clean those areas out regularly.
>
> I suggest going through your garden to look for places where black widows 
> might like to hide, then squishing them when you see them (with a shoe or 
> piece of wood, but NOT with your hand, for obvious reasons).  I've 
> vacuumed them with a shop van in our garage.
>
> Move things around as much as possible so that if you don't actually 
> encounter and kill the spiders, you've at least disturbed their home and 
> (hopefully) encourage them to move even deeper into hiding.
>
> In your search, you'll no doubt come across small, cottony white blobs, 
> pea sized or slightly larger.  Those are black widow spider egg clusters. 
> Squish those, too.
>
> University of california cooperative extension has a page on their website 
> about managing black window spiders
> http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn74149.html
>
> I've never heard of any predators sold for black widow spiders which isn't 
> surprising since they are not considered to be an agricultural pest.
>
> If you want to discuss this more, contact me off line.
>
> On Jun 22, 2012, at 8:43 PM, Lawrence F. London, Jr. wrote:
>
>> On 6/22/2012 12:46 PM, Mitch Shirts wrote:
>>> Any suggestions for getting rid of Black widows? Are there any natural
>>> predators?
>>
>>
>>> I'm in the suburbs of San Diego and recently I've seen a bunch in
>>> my yard. I've got kids at home that like to roam my garden and pick and 
>>> eat
>>> fruit and I don't want them to get bitten, but I also don't want to 
>>> spray
>>> any hard core chemicals if I can help it.
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