Today on Garden Adventures, watch Paula work on a container garden for her back deck. Pretty pretty tomatoes and peppers. Look at the lovely herbs (cilantro, basil, chives and parsley). See Paula plant the flowers—marigolds, salvia, impatiens, begonias. Oh, look, lizards sunning themselves and playing courtship games...
Hey, wait a minute, is that a black widow spider in that pot?
Why, yes. Yes, it is.
For a little while, I thought I was jumping to conclusions. Yeah, big round black abdomen, and yeah, when she moved around you could see a flash of something red on her belly. But really, a black widow spider in my container garden? Come on.
But then she flipped over and there was the red marking on the underside of her abdomen, just like this. And she also had a big round egg sac just like the one in that photo.
Normally, I'm a live and let live kind of person. She was outside in her own habitat. But she was also laying eggs and making more black widows. And we have kids and animals here. Plus adults trying to have a nice little container garden who don't need to stick their hands into a pot of dirt and come back with a possibly fatal bite.
I hated to do it, but the spider is no more. And neither is her egg sac.
I just hope she was a loner.
1 comment:
You are very brave. I would have probably run away screaming.
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