That's a big Spider....SHOOT THE F###ER!
This has gone on long enough--why in he** would you not KILL an insect that was harmful to you???? Are you an insect trophy hunter??? Going to 'mount' (I mean for display) that spider? Or, maybe you have another creature around (bird, perhaps), that you fed the spider to? You gotta tell us....
Personally, I don't get it either, but I had a friend outside Atlanta who, when I visited, actually pointed to one side of his garage and said "don't go over on that side". I of course asked why, and he just replied "black widows everywhere". I asked why he didn't kill them, and he just shrugged and said "'cause they'll just come back anyway" and left it at that. What shocked me most was that he had a young daughter. I didn't sleep well that night at all, and got the heck out of dodge as early as I could the next morning.
In the mid '70s I lived in a small cabin in a redwood forest in central California. Outside there were bright orange and yellow banana slugs a foot long and inside at night there were large brown spiders as big as a silver dollar. The slugs were harmless and maybe the spiders were too but a person just doesn't want to see spiders that big on your walls or ceiling when you get up in the middle of the night. To deal with the spiders I would pull the lead bullets out of .22 shells and jam the still loaded with powder shells into a wax candle. Ta Da! Wax bullets. Loaded the trusty old AR-7 survival rifle with one wax bullet round (Barney Fife style for safety), blasted the monsters where ever they appeared, fell back to sleep easily, and cleaned up the mess in the morning. Real black widow spiders are everywhere here. I'm sure I could come up with a few if I crawled under the house or looked hard enough in the garage. Leave 'em alone they will do the same to you.
I hear you. I lived in LA for 5 years & San Francisco for 10 & found black widows, their webs, egg sacks in all the corners. Leave them alone & they will leave you alone. Its not like they are a Brown Recluse.
I used to catch fat black widows and feed them to my pet emperor scorpion. I names her claw-dia, get it? anyway, she was methodical about disassembling the little ba$tards, quite facinating to hear the crunching as she ate them.
at our ranch in south texas theres a "spare" garage, that had'nt been opened in about 2 years, well one day the work truck broke down, and i was told to get the other one out of the garage... i opened the door and thousands of little white balls(there eggs???) start falling all over the place, i didnt think much about it until i looked up and saw nothing but spider webs and black widows all over the place, of course i ran like a little girl, slapping all the little egg things and whatever was on me... about 20 min later we go over to the garage and take a look in, the entire, and when i say entire i mean EVERYTHING was covered with spider webs, the cars, anything that had been stored in there... it was one freaky scene... and sure enough you can see on the truck alone about 30 of the damn things crawling around... i still kinda shiver thinking about it... took us about 2 days to clear it out, and about 10 of those rodent/pest bombs, to kill "most" of them... and we had to use a little blow torch to get rid of all the cobwebs... the worst part was getting the damn truck out of there, after i started it up, all sorts of crap was falling under it, and well the engine bay was one hell of a mess, just opening the the hood was the worst part of it all...
I used to keep potentially deadly arachnids as pets The ones in the US you really want to look out for are brown recluse spiders. A couple of my friends have ended up in the hospital because of them (the girl I know who got bit now has an "ass implant" due to the flesh eating properties of the venom). Just catch it in a plastic container of some sort (one large enough to allow you to catch the spider without having a chance of it getting close enough to bite you), and let it go outside.
On a related note, during the summer I had a neighbor's long-lost tarantula resurface on my lawn during sunset one night. My dog was staring at something moving in the grass (and since it was getting dark) I went up thinking it was a wounded bird or at least something similar.. I needed a change of shorts after I finally got up close and realized exactly what it was. Black widows don't scare me as much anymore!
CMY, Some of the big furry ones stand up on their hind legs, hiss, and even jump - some scary sh*t. Glad I haven't encountered any in the wild! I don't really know why I didn't kill I - there is no real danger to me or anyone else (no pets, no kids). I'll clear away the web, but it's futile trying to kill every spider outside the house; at least they keep the insects at bay (I live in the foothills surrounded by alot of vegetation and huge trees, so that brings alot of wildlife) - I try to keep my distance. So far it's worked for me, I've never been bitten. When a huge spider decides to park itself on the ceiling above my bed, that's when I draw the line. Still, I don't often kill them - just 'reposition' them to the corner of the room - several days later I usually find them dead or gone.
james,don't tell me your shi* scared of it,if need be i'll fly over and kill it for you......lol when are you planning to kill it?
On another note,a month ago at work,i went to put my work boots on and out of the corner of my eye,i noticed something move and i pulled back and inpected the inside of the boot and i seen a big ass redback spider! I nearly slipped the boot on with him in there. Could have been bad as we were just about to step into the cage to go underground After i shook him out of the boot, i didnt hesitate to turkey trample the big f*cker to death! Die Die Die spider! I hate spiders
My brother has a mate here that has 2 bird eating spiders. I havent seen them,but they are almost as big a dinner plate he said.The overall size with their legs of course. Cost him around $300 each! What a crazy ass punk! I dont wanna see them either I hate spiders