Brown Widow #2

<---This is our very own Widow!

Okay, so my brother came home that day and took out tweezers, extracted the widow from inside the chair, and put it into a vile. We are now certain this is a brown widow. The egg sacs are the same, white-ish and spikey. I thought we were going to do this big thing about how there are brown widows here and such but someone beat us to it. Apparently it was in the paper last week. So watch out there are brown widows on the loose, we are not the only ones!

Brown Widow #1

Yesterday I was called out to my backyard by Derek. He said, "look there's a black widow under this chair". As we proceed to kill it we find 9 egg sacs. However during Derek's momentary absence, the widow hid. We had no choice but to sink the giant deck chair inside my pool, that way we would not only kill the hiding widow but her precious egg sacs too...hahhaha....

We then sink a pair of shorts that we suspect the mother widow could be hiding in. I then go to swish it around and see this enormous brown spider with the shape of a black widow. Huh? Weird. So we kill it without fully seeing it's belly, but we know black widows are black, so no worries.

That's what I think, I pull out the chair this morning and see all the egg sacs in tact but assume they are all but lively little spiders, I then check closely in the crevices of the chair and see another brown spider! What the deuce! This time is different though, I have the option of looking at this hopefully drowned and dead brown spider from 2 angles. I walk around the chair bend down and gaze at this gross spider only to see.......

an hourglass!

Are you kidding me???? So I run inside and call my brother telling him for sure it's a white widow. He tells me to get a vile from his desk and preserve it. Are you kidding me again???? NO WAY!!! I mean it might be dead from the 24 hour submerging, but still, one cannot be so sure! So I do only what I can, I go on the internet. I wikipedia "white widow spider" but realize that these spiders do not bear the mark of the hourglass. I then use the links to various other widow spiders and come upon the "Brown Widow Spider".

expert from wikipedia:
"Like all Latrodectus species, L. geometricus has a bite which is venomous to humans; unfortunately, according to Dr. G.B. Edwards, a University of Florida arachnologist, the brown widow venom is twice as potent as the black widow venom, but is usually confined to the bite area and surrounding tissue, as opposed to the Black Widow."

I have not an expert's opinion yet but I saw what I saw! Wikipedia says it's usually only in Florida, Mississippi and Texas. Hopefully my brother will capture, preserve and get it analyzed at the lab. Until then we can only wait.

Monica Gellar

I absolutely hate my job. I work for starbucks and I am NOT a team player. No one there knows how to do anything, let alone anything right. So why should I be a team player? This you say, is called Type A.

Well if type A is wrong, I don't want to be right!

Where are all the good people in the world? I know, I know, it's just starbucks, but seriously is there any work ethic left in the world? Get off your lazy butts and do something, and do it right. (And when I say right, I mean: my way.)

All this to say, I really just need to move to Santorini and learn to speak greek.

Blogging isn't just for intellectuals anymore!

Guess what? I'm going to post arbitrary facts, fun stories and whatnots. Thanks for the inspiration Wendy!!!

So far the only blog I've written on this was back in 2005 just before my trip to Costa Rica, Yeah-I went to Costa Rica, twice.



playa conchal