At first it was just a few




Last year I found a big one who had built a web behind the driver's seat in my truck. Past that, it was one here or there, which I am fine with. Rural life includes these things, it's part of the package.

Last weekend I go out to the lawnmower, and on a table beside it I find fifteen of their easily identified egg sacs. Yeah, fifteen.

I gathered them with a stick, poured gas on them, and lit them on fire. I hosed down the five adult brown widows I found around the lawnmower with poison.

Now, I know that these spiders aren't particularly aggressive, and I haven't been overly worried in the past. I have lived around black widows all of my life to no ill effect (a colony resides in my garbage cans outside even now).

What worries me now is their great numbers around the house. I do not want myself or my wife to grab something and get bitten because we stuck our hand onto the spider. From what I have read, the brown widows are twice as poisonous as their black cousins (though the venom is more localized to the wound).

I talked to a guy I work with who used to be in pest control, and he told me spider infestations are tough to deal with without calling in the experts. Even then he doubted I would rid myself of them to any great extent without payin' quite a sum of cash for regular upkeep.

Anybody have any advice for stemming the invasion? I tried training the squirrels to attack them on sight, but that didn't work out so well (I don't have the smartest squirrels in the neighborhood). Right now I kill ten a week on average with regular spray poison, and so far I have found none inside the house. Lord knows how many I miss in nooks and crannies.

Maybe I should just move.