It's a spider, don't panic

Enough spider hysteria.

Tony Green has the right approach to meeting a spider face-to-face: He called me a short time ago and left this message, "Hi, Jim, I just wanted to let you know I found a beautiful black widow spider behind a box in my garage, and we've saved it for you."

Did Tony go screaming out of his house, "Black widow! Black widow! We're all gonna die!"?

No; he just took the spider as a natural part of everything we live with here, like mule deer and robins. He showed the spider to his kids, warned them that he was saving it in a plastic container for me on a shelf in the garage and not to play with it. Hannah, Bruce, Spencer and Dane thought that was cool, and were looking forward to hearing more about their dad's spider - and that was that.

The female black widow spider is the only spider in this area that has venom powerful enough to cause problems.

Latrodectus is the genus name of the black widow family, Theridiidae (Ther-UH-dee-ah-dee). There are about 32 recognized species found all over Planet Earth, and the black widow spider is perhaps the best-known member of the genus. Here's the science of this unusual spider:

Its bite (not "sting") is dangerous because of the neurotoxin, "latrotoxin" (named for the genus), in the venom (not "poison"). It causes a reaction that affects the nervous system, thereby causing excruciating pain and other very unpleasant reactions which, in children and olde folke like me, can be fatal.

The female black widow has unusually large venom glands; consequently, when it bites, it administers a lot of it. However, Latrodectus bites rarely kill humans if proper medical treatment is provided.

Our common black widow comes by the name "widow" because of her persistent habit of devouring her mate.

Black widows do not enjoy living in the light. They prefer to be left alone in darkness; that means they are usually found in your dark basement, behind things in the shop, under your house (like they are at mine), and the most famous place was the grand old outhouse. Indoor plumbing eliminated black widow injuries to males when going to the bathroom.

You do not have to see a widow to know when you've blundered into her corner of your basement, garage, woodpile, or behind the dryer or washing machine. The minute you touch the web you'll hear and feel it breaking. The web actually "crackles" when it's broken, and you will actually feel it tug at your hand, newspaper or broom. Even I can hear it, and I'm deaf as a post.

Its construction is a helter-skelter, crisscross bunch of silk going in all directions. If the web has been there for a long time there will be several thumbnail-sized dull white eggs sacks among the maze of

webbing.

Black widow silk is the strongest substance known on earth. I once had an engineer/biologist tell me that all the enormous steel cables holding the Golden Gate Bridge together could be replaced by black widow silk cables the size of a pencil. Black widow silk cross-hairs replaced the horse hairs in the Norden bombsight in World War II because it didn't break when the aircraft was bounced around in the sky by bursting anti-aircraft fire.

If you have an inordinate fear of those black widows in the crawl-space under your home, be careful how you eliminate them. Sure, chemicals will work, but you'd better check on what the stuff might do to you, your pets and the air you breath before you go that route.

The black widows under my double-wide shaky-shanty are the reason I NEVER kill spiders scooped out of my bathtub or sinks. They are harmless, and releasing them unharmed in the kitchen cabinets, pantry, clothes closets or behind the TV will prevent black widows from entering my living space. The other harmless spiders literally eat the black widow out of house and home.

If you can't live with black widows, and gotta kill 'em, do it by hand, or eliminate their food supply.