Black Widow

I was a bit surprised last week when I turned over a flower pot that had been turned upside-down most of the summer to find a Black Widow spider inside.

I assume most people know about these spiders and have seen pictures of them.  And many people may think, as I once did, that the red hour-glass shaped spot is on their back.  But, that is wrong.  The red spot is actually on their abdomen.  In the above picture, you are looking at the underside of the spider.  She was clinging to her web upside down.  The red hour-glass shaped spot can be irregular.  The hour-glass is broken up by a black band on this spider so that it looks like 2 spots.

The Black Widow is entirely black except for the red on her belly.  Here is what she looked like from the top side.  Actually somewhat pretty, if she weren't poisonous!

In Oklahoma, there are two kinds of poisonous spiders, the Black Widow and the Brown Recluse.   But, they have extremely different kinds of venom.  The Black Widow carries a neurotoxin that causes elevated blood pressure, nausea, vomiting, headache, painful muscle cramps and weakness, possible seizures and even death.  The Brown Recluse poison, on the other hand, is a hemotoxic venom which can cause a necrotizing ulcer at the site of the bite that destroys the soft tissue around it, possibly taking months to heal, and perhaps leaving a deep scar.

The good news is that neither of these spiders is particularly aggressive and bites are not that common.   In fact, some people who are bitten experience no symptoms.  But, still it's not a good idea to have these spiders living in close proximity to humans.  So, I got a glove and caught this spider, put her in a jar and transported her half a mile or so away to a rocky area where she was safely away from people and could go about her business.

I know it would have been easier to just kill her, but I simply didn't see the need for that.  She was just in the wrong place and needed to move on.  Since she was not going to do that on her own, I helped her out a little bit.

Oh, and by the way, the reason these spiders are called Black Widows is because they kill the male after they mate with him.  Poor guy!  Also, the male Black Widow is not poisonous, is much small than the female, and does not even look like the female in that he has a distinctive pattern on his top side that consists of a row of reddish dots and white or yellow lines.