Brown Widow Spiders Are Obsessed With Me

Last year, my husband and I were sitting on the front porch on our cute little bistro set...and we noticed a rather large spider web built beneath the last rung on the table. For a few months, we basically ignored it. We live in Miami, Florida, and there are tons of spiders everywhere. No biggie.

Until my husband actually SAW the spider one day. No, I should say, until he saw what KIND of spider it was one day.

It was a brown widow spider.

GAH! I had no idea that brown widow spiders were around here...needless to say, hubs squashed it. And then he squashed all of the egg sacks.

Yes, I said ALL of the egg sacks, because there were FOUR of them. Yuck.

So, you can imagine my disdain when I was sitting on my front porch this afternoon and noticed there was a new cobweb on my bistro set. Yup. You guessed it. Another brown widow spider.

I am not squeamish by an measure, but this just creeps me out. Knowing that a little insect, with a body less than a quarter of an inch in diameter, could bite me and actually cause me unimaginable physical pain...well, it makes me want to stomp it into oblivion.

I found this picture afterwards at CISR.UCR.EDU, because in my spastic reaction to seeing this little bastard crawling along the leg of the table, I squished it without taking a moment to picture it.

Does this picture give you the heeie-jeebies? Imagine what it looks like crawling right in front of your face!

I thoroughly enjoyed squishing it in a paper towel. I may have grunted, "die, bastard, die!!" as I did so. I'm not ashamed.