Ugh..Black Widows under the water trough!

[Ridge_Runner]

Does anyone else have trouble with black widow spiders living under their water troughs? No joke. Tonight I drained and scrubbed out the trough and turned it over to get the last little bit of water out and there were several black widows underneath. Yuck! This is not the first time ever but it is the first time I’ve seen any this summer. I absolutely hate them (and fear them) and have had several close calls and was nearly bitten. Once one got in my brush box and I almost put my hand on it when I picked up my brush. Another time, one was in my helmet! Is there anything you can do to get rid of them? Any natural enemies I can buy to turn loose like fly predators? I appreciate any suggestions!

The difference between commitment and involvement is like a ham and egg sandwich…the chicken was involved but the pig was committed!

[buryinghill1]

http://pelotes.jea.com/spiders.htm

[Everythingbutwings]

Such a beautiful opportunity on a Friday afternoon.

Friendship is Love without his wings
-Lord Byron

[cinnabar]

Janeway, I couldn’t look at the links either! I have trouble with the S volume of the encyclopedia! Never liked spiders, never will. I’ve gotten better about co-existing with daddy long legs and little spiders in the barn - although it’s mostly avoidance or get out the hose - but those big suckers…I’ll sweep them out if I can get up the nerve, or I’ll find the fly spray. At least that slows them down till I can get some better ammunition! Eeeeewwwwww!

[Charis]

For those of us in the south…
a FAVORITE hiding place of the brown recluse are
the jump cup pin holes in wooden standards!!
Learned this the hard way years ago when a trainer of mine got bitten adjusting the jump.

Always look first. (PVC standards do NOT seem to interest the critters)
The recluse is brown, slightly fuzzy and has a tan/white spot shaped like a fiddle.

One Nation under GOD>

[horsemad]

I wish there was a :shudder: graemilin! Yuk! Yuk! Yuk!

[breezymeadow]

Breezymeadow - who is a complete & total ARACHNOPHOBIC, has spiders in her barn the size of BUICKS!!!

While I have gritted my teeth & de-cobwebbed the stall bars, etc., I have absolutely NO plans to swipe down the HUGE, OPAQUE, BEDSHEET-SIZED webs higher up where I have seen hairy moving things larger than my HAND!!!

And I don’t see Mr. Breezymeadow exactly jumping up & down to help here, either.

Can’t wait for the first hard frost. . . .

My body is a temple - unfortunately, it’s a “fixer- upper”.

[Winglet]

sorry, I don’t think there’s ANYTHING you can do to make me bite a spider… I used to mow the back end of a Golf Driving Range, behind the fence… it got 2 or 3 feet high before we mowed it (with weed eater brand push mowers that fell apart every 50 yards) and there were THOUSANDS of wolf spiders there, from the size of a dime to the size of my mower’s wheels, and they all ran away very fast, regardless of their size. Black widows, however, seem unfazed by anything but their imminent doom…

If you loan someone twenty dollars, then never see them again, it was probably worth it.

www.geocities.com/winglet18

[Finzean]

We have the Rubbermaid water troughs and the underside is sort of waffle-y - there are always Black Widows under there!!! Creepy!

Other recent unwanted pests visiting the farm this week:

the fearless red fox that farm owners husband has been feeding chicken scraps to (he got in major trouble for that when she found out!!!)

The farm owners husband (just kidding!! we were all just upset with him for baiting the fox - he’s been, hmm, re-educated about the subject)

4 wild dogs which received some bird shot to motivate them to travel elsewhere

those crazy build a nest in the horse trailer birds!!! They are becoming pests!

About the spiders - I always try to have a stick handy that I can smash into the waffle holes to kill them. (where’s the yuck graemlin??)

---

What’re you doin’ on the ground? I thought you said you could ride?!

Well, I was ridin’ when I fell off!!!

[Winglet]

I always knew it.

If you loan someone twenty dollars, then never see them again, it was probably worth it.

www.geocities.com/winglet18

[Pixie_Dust]

What do brown recluse spiders look like? We have a client who was bit and she is missing part of her leg because of it.

While I don’t want bugs or spiders ON me, they don’t really bother me. I don’t ever kill spiders because they serve a useful purpose, but of course I sweep them out of areas I don’t think they belong.

Superheroes of the universe, unite! http://www.allmightysenators.com/super.html

http://hometown.aol.com/bgoosewood/index.html

[Robbierox]

…move to Canada!!!

[Pixie_Dust]

We have lots of black widows. I just am careful when picking stuff up. I only find them under rocks (or cinder blocks) they are pretty predictable and slow. I have not found any in my helmet YIKES though I did find a dead mouse there once EW.

Superheroes of the universe, unite! http://www.allmightysenators.com/super.html

http://hometown.aol.com/bgoosewood/index.html

[Janeway]

<BLOCKQUOTE class=“ip-ubbcode-quote”><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by MoReDQthanU:
AHHH the joys of Canada. Spiders are my biggest fear. I swear I have arachniphobia(sp?) If I see a large-ish spider, I practically cry!!

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

That is me as well MoreDQ! I just freeze if I see a big one. Unfortunately, after having moved to the westcoast from Alberta I have discovered that Canada does indeed have some nice big ones; and they run like hell if you try to get them, which makes it worse!

Good lord, I can feel the goosebumps already just thinking about them

[Ridge_Runner]

Arnika, I think I know what a wolf spider looks like…they are brown with a black stripe. What I saw was kind of a medium brown with no black, very hairy and it’s legs were different from wolf spiders. It really resembled a tarantula more than anything else. It did not move quickly, TG, or I would have had a heart attack! Someone told me it might have been a Banana Spider. Do you know what they look like?

Breezymeadow, I’m so bad I can’t even watch that movie Aracnophobia without whimpering and cowering on the sofa. My husband thinks it’s very funny, but I’m not amused. There is some new movie coming out called “Eight Legged Freaks” with giant spiders that eat people or something. I think I’ll avoid that one.

Has anyone ever heard of a black widow biting a horse? Just curious. I have seen a Brown Recluse bite on a persons leg, it was like a sunken, infected hole. Very disgusting.

The difference between commitment and involvement is like a ham and egg sandwich…the chicken was involved but the pig was committed!

[Snowbird]

But, I prefer just looking at their pictures. You have all convinced me of one thing and that is I won’t retire to the south. I can deal with bears, foxes, bob cats and even cayotes, but eight legged things are not a favorite friend of mine. I have even survived the invasion of Canada Geese, found a friend who likes to train his dogs who are competitors in the working dog field trials.

I am looking for an owl I can convince to live here to get rid of pigeons but that’s my personal limit. Compared to a Black Widow spider I think the Polar Bears are kind of cute.

[buryinghill1]

I got bitten by a Brown Recluse. The horseshoer (George Fitzgerald) was shoeing horses on the same aisle and he recognized the symptoms right away.
Got me to Palm Beach Hospital (Wellington) in record time. Doctors said his speediness prevented a lot of problems. Who’d -a- thunk a farrier would be a hero…

[Camstock]

Yd, can you tell us precisely what the symptoms were? There was just a news story on that they found brown recluses in the southern part of Iowa.

I know this doesn’t fit in with the whole spider thing, but on the “Yechy things in hay” part of it, I once found half a dried up snake looping out of a haybale like the Loch Ness Monster. Of course, I was carrying the bale with my hand an inch away from it when I saw it. Gah! I threw the hay bale about 15 feet, military press style. Hubby dearest came out and dealt with it (and we threw the bale away to avoid the horses being exposed to botulism).

Hubby was so nice to deal with the snake, so understanding, and didn’t even make fun of his girly girl wife. But his parting words were, “Well, that was half the snake, wonder where the other half is?” Aaaaaahhhh!

[Tin]

and to think I was complaining about earwigs in my jump standards… I will NEVER complain about them again!! ick! stay safe guys

~ Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once ~

[arnika]

We have tons of black widows under our troughs. Though we have never seen a brown recluse. We live in Fl.

               ~Lauren

Have you ever noticed that people neverr fall off backwards?~Food for thought.