I almost soiled myself !

[Stormchase]

So with that said ... I live here in florida. Also i live right on a protected wetland the butts up with my back yard. I get a lot of frogs and cool things to get shots of so i decided to go out at night time for a chance to see something cool! So i slap on my macro lens and grab a flashlight. I open my patio door and hear a faint crackle of the web of a black widow. A sound I know well but didnt think thats what it could be! With fear of it I quickly closed the door and shined my light outside seeing nothing. Memories of Arizona black widows race through my head. (I once klled over 30 in a car i used to own... gave the car away) I open the door again with no sounds so I think its just my imagination. After all its 12am! So i walk outside right into a tight string of a web! snap! The next thing I know is the feeling of a LARGE spider running across my head. Ahh I must have looked like pee wee hearman on meth for about 10 seconds. So I ran in the patio and somewhere along the way my shirt was already off and Im checking my whole body for spiders! lol like 10 min before I calmed down! So me being me I had to go back out after about 20 min and see if I see anything. CLOTHED and spider free I head back out with the flashlight to see a broken spider web floating in the air and here is what was at the top of it!

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around 2 inches long!

see the fang???? sheesh
NOW i know it is not a black widow but they have these BROWN widows here too. Many different color scheems too. I didnt ever see the bottom so I am not positive on this. I do know black widows WELL and their webs / eggs. It was a widow web and there was an egg sac close by wich resembles the spikey black widow sac. lol so im not really looking for C&C on this because i was so shaken up takeing it. But concidering it came out ok so if you like ... . I spent a good while online for spider identification and it seems to be a brown widow! most are shiny and no hair but Florida State University claims some browns can have hairs!
I know there are some smart peeps on here. If anyone know for sure could you let me know??
Thanks for letting me share my HEEBEE JEEBEEYS story with ya'll!

For the outdoor photographers .. ALWAYS LOOK WHERE YOU KNEEL DOWN AND POKE AROUND! YOU NEVER KNOW!

 

[Baaaark]

EEEK! I've had the same thing happen with me, but with brown recluses. I don't know much about Black Widows.

Great photo, too!

 

[RobNZ]

Lmao, glad I live in NZ with no snakes and 1 very midly venomous native spider which is also very rare, although our spiders can't hurt you they sure can scare the crap out of you.

One night before going to bed I went to go have a pee before going to bed right after I had been out to shut the big gates on our property and as I was mid full stream (sorry a little graphic) I happened to notice a big black spider on my shirt.

Squealed like a little girl and spent the next 5 minutes cleaning the floor and walls almost to the ceiling, lmao.

Actually thanks for reminding me, we have another nasty spider here called a white tail, import from Australia I think, quite aggressive, and the bite wound takes forever to heal and can lead to complications.

I caught 2 of them a couple weeks back, usually I would just kill them as they are not native, but thought I would keep them to shoot, but I effin hate spiders and need to work out a way to 1: not have to handle the little buggers and 2: keep them where I want them for the shoot, they give me the willies.

Anyway I put them in a plastic jar and they are still alive 2 weeks later, incredible things really. Will shoot them tomorrow.

Cool shot BTW.

 

[K8-90]

You can HEAR spiders?! My god, I freak out if a ladybug gets in the house. Excuse my archnoignorance, but are widows (black, brown) dangerous?

I could NOT live anywhere with big creepy-crawlies... Or lizards and gators.

 

[magkelly]

Yes, any type of widow spider is poisonous though not to the extent that it can kill you usually unless you have a compromised immune system, are very old, or a small child, baby or similar sized animal. Not enough venom in one bite. Most adults it can make you feel very ill indeed but it won't kill you.

The tiny brown recluse spider is another story. One bite from one of those can ultimately lead to you losing a limb or even death, though that too is pretty rare these days. That happened to a member of my family when he was young and half of his arm went necrotic. He survived but he can't even look at a spider, even a harmless one, he's still so afraid.

They do have anti-venoms and antibiotics now for a lot of the more toxic souders that if you get to the hospital fairly quick they can give you to really minimize the effect of a spider bite, but I understand not for all. I was reading about the spiders in AUS a few weeks ago and apparently the venom from a small few of them actually could just kill you before you can get to a hospital if you happened to be bit in the outback or something.

I've only run into two spiders of the toxic variety, and I hope that's all I ever will. Neither of which got close enough to bite. One was in our fridge salad drawer. It piggybacked in on some new produce apparently. The other was out near our garage. Both black widows. The one in the fridge we just caught in a jar and put back outside. Ditto the one near the garage. We just caught it in a jar and moved it further away from human habitation out in the woods.

I saw no reason to kill them. They were just doing what spiders do, looking for food and/or trying to build a home and spiders are useful creatures, even the toxic ones so I like to leave them alone if I can. I can't have a toxic one near the house breeding though so if I see a widow or something it has to go back out to the nearest woods. Last thing I need around are dozens of them making even more of them, becoming a real threat to me and mine, and I surely would use chemicals to rid someplace of an infestation, but I do try to be fair if it's only one spider.

Spiders don't scare me too much really. I think they are kind of neat actually. That's not to say I appreciate one in my bed, but I can deal with them, most of the time....

Actually the two spiders I met, they didn't freak me nearly as much as the nest of copperheads they found practically right by the front door when I was a kid. As a general rule snakes don't bother me either, but the idea that a whole big pack of young kids were playing in that yard every day for probably months with those things, that's REALLY scary for me to think about even now.

Spiders most of the time you can just walk away.

But poisonous snakes can be aggressive and they move really fast besides.

 

[Mbnmac]

Lmao, glad I live in NZ with no snakes and 1 very midly venomous native spider which is also very rare, although our spiders can't hurt you they sure can scare the crap out of you.

One night before going to bed I went to go have a pee before going to bed right after I had been out to shut the big gates on our property and as I was mid full stream (sorry a little graphic) I happened to notice a big black spider on my shirt.

Squealed like a little girl and spent the next 5 minutes cleaning the floor and walls almost to the ceiling, lmao.

Actually thanks for reminding me, we have another nasty spider here called a white tail, import from Australia I think, quite aggressive, and the bite wound takes forever to heal and can lead to complications.

I caught 2 of them a couple weeks back, usually I would just kill them as they are not native, but thought I would keep them to shoot, but I effin hate spiders and need to work out a way to 1: not have to handle the little buggers and 2: keep them where I want them for the shoot, they give me the willies.

Anyway I put them in a plastic jar and they are still alive 2 weeks later, incredible things really. Will shoot them tomorrow.

Cool shot BTW.

I actually looked into it, having seen one here in CHCH, and found that they don't really cause many problems in adults, and are nowhere near fatal like a lot of people claim.
Red backs now, that's a different story.

I like spiders, want to spend some time with macro insects once I get my camera, nice shot

 

[Ron Evers]

That would freak me out too. Shudder!

 

[rusty9]

tl;dr
nice shot though

 

[vtf]

Some brown recluses in our area, black widows not as much but wolf spiders are everywhere, when my kids were small we found one in their room with the leg span of 5 inches. I believe it was old and dying since it didnt move quickly so we took it outside. I've seen some beautiful garden spiders and their webs too.
Nice capture.

 

[Kofman13]

wow amazing shot, what camera and lens did u use?

 

[pbelarge]

Great work Storm, keep up the nightime strolls, the story is lots of fun. :mrgreen:


I can picture the spider dance, great picture in my head.

 

[nickb98c]

Some brown recluses in our area, black widows not as much but wolf spiders are everywhere, when my kids were small we found one in their room with the leg span of 5 inches. I believe it was old and dying since it didnt move quickly so we took it outside. I've seen some beautiful garden spiders and their webs too.
Nice capture.

Same here. But I have never seen a spider that big, nor to I care to. Im not a big spider fan to say the least.

Nice shot!

 

[nickb98c]

I like the sharpness on the body too.

 

[magkelly]

I met one of those HUGE wolf spiders when I was a kid. Even my fearless cat, who chased anything practically including and up to the neighbors nasty, huge horse of a dog (My cat who was tiny compared to him eventually terrified him and that dog just didn't scare easily.) would not take on one of those. She took one look at me went "UHUH!" and backed off and out of the room.

Dang thing looked like a huge brown tarantula. It was just too scary, even for me. It had to be 6" across, I kid you not. I sprayed a whole can of RAID on that MF, sprayed it snow white, and it still crawled down the wall at me. I ended up throwing a heavy decorative bowl over it figuring it was too heavy for the spider to move it and maybe the spray would kill it eventually anyway.

24 hours later I get the courage to turn it over and it's dead all right, but it's also dessicated and shrunk down to maybe 1/6 it's size leaving a whitish stain that was as big as it's former self behind. I actually wish I'd had a camera at the time. It was such a cool image.

I've only seen one since and it wasn't nearly that big, but I still don't mess with those things. Regular sized spiders I can deal with. Those, they're spiders on freakin steroids and I'm not THAT brave. Only in a case at the zoo do I find one of those fascinating, in person ICK.

 

[NateS]

First of all great shot and great detail. Second, that is not a brown widow. It is an Orb Weaver. More specifically, it is the Genus Eriphora and most likely species Eriphora Ravilla. Pretty much a harmless spider and if he did bite you it would probably be like bee sting with a welt that lasts a little bit longer.


Regarding Brown Widows, I'm no entemologist, but to my knowledge Brown Widows are smooth backed, not hairy, and they usually have some type of patterned markings on their back. Also, even if it was a brown widow, they are very mild and considered much less dangerous as they want to flee rather than bite. Still fairly toxic, but less dangerous overall. No real reason to be scared of a spider like the one above....or even if it was a brown widow. Be scared of the ones that you can't see and give respect to...those are the ones you will tick off without realizing they are even there.