Be Nice To Spiders...and their Families

After finding her on our porch, I got online to research black widow spiders. For my own peace of mind I needed to know how aggressive they are, how territorial, how long they live, what might tempt them to come in my house & eat my face. I found out a few things that made me want to make sure that we didn't leave our new red-hourglass-bellied friend on our front porch.

I found out that the young females are the brightest red, and based on her color, ours was young. I found out that they can live for 5 years. I found out that they usually spend the first part of their life scoping out possible homes, and once they find one they like, they tend to stay put. I found out how many hundreds of offspring they typically produce in their life spans. The numbers & facts were too much to be comfortable, and then we found this up under the carport today:

I didn't feel very happy at all about that. We assume that it's the same spider, because based on the fact that black widows are sometimes cannibals - one of (if not THE) only spiders who actually kill & eat other spiders - she probably wouldn't share our front porch with another one. I guess we'll see. But we decided that she needed to be removed from our house immediately.

This is where my story differs from the story that would be told if this particular spider family had been on the front porch of my friend Tyler or my sister Melissa's house.

We didn't kill her or destroy the eggs. We just relocated them. Carefully.

Adam & Simon & I took a little walk around the neighborhood to scope out a place that would meet our main criteria:

1. it had to be within relatively short walking distance b/c we didn't want to have to carry her around for a long time.
2. it had to be far enough from our house that we felt reasonably assured she'd not find her way back to our homey porch.
3. it had to be far enough from anyone else's home that she wouldn't endanger our neighbors and/or be killed by one of them
4. it had to be a place unlikely to be trespassed by children or pets of ours or our neighbors.

We found a good spot that met all of the criteria so Adam swiped the spider & the eggs onto an old broom and took a little hike with her. Simon & I hung out and danced to Katie Day Good in the living room. He returned several minutes later after having successfully placed her in her new home.

I called Tyler to tell him that we'd taken care of her, but he was mortified that we'd let her ("and all those babies!") live. I told my parents and they reacted with some concern. I told them I must've read "Be Nice To Spiders" a few too many times as a child, and they responded by telling me they didn't think my sister read it at all. I know for a fact that she, without remorse, kills just about any crawly critter that comes within reach of her. I remember challenging her on such violent anti-bug tendencies, to which she responded "they should know better than to come that close to me." Oh well. I guess that's why I have a black widow setting up camp on my front porch and she doesn't. Word gets out through the bug underground that I'm a softy. The effect of their responses caused me to second-guess what I'd done (or not done, actually) and feel like maybe I'd done something wrong. I fretted, just a bit.

An hour or so later I was at the laundromat, drying Simon's diapers that we'd washed. Due to the thunderstorm, we knew they'd never dry on the line and we needed them urgently. I find that we go through diapers at least twice as fast when he's constipated, b/c he's not quite succeeding in his attempts to poo, but he's succeeding just enough to require a clean diaper. Anyway, I view going to the laundromat as an opportunity to read, uninterrupted, for a half hour while my laundry dries. I'd been meaning to start a new book, The Language of God by Francis S. Collins, so I brought it along & got through the introduction & chapter one before the diapers finished.

Within that first chapter, I found a story that validated my choice to kindly relocate our albino-challenged spouse-less arachnid. I immediately ceased fretting. I'll leave you with it. The author relays that it is a Sufi story, told by Benedictine nun Sister Joan Chittister, and notes that he found it in What Does It Mean To Be Human? Reverence for Life Reaffirmed by Responses from Around the World.

Once upon a time there was an old woman who used to meditate on the bank of the Ganges. One morning, finishing her meditation, she saw a scorpion floating helplessly in the strong current. As the scorpion was pulled closer, it got caught in roots that branched out far into the river. The scorpion struggled frantically to free itself but got more and more entangled. She immediately reached out to the drowning scorpion, which, as soon as she touched it, stung her. The old woman withdrew her hand but, having regained her balance, once again tried to save the creature. Every time she tried, however, the scorpion's tail stung her so badly that her hands became bloody and her face distorted with pain. A passerby who saw the old woman struggling with the scorpion shouted, "What's wrong with you, fool! Do you want to kill yourself to save that ugly thing?" Looking into the stranger's eyes, she answered, "Because it is the nature of the scorpion to sting, why should I deny my own nature to save it?"