Beautiful specimen.
My 5 year old daughter and I were out hunting roaches in a park a few months ago and I found a large Black widow under a piece of cardboard. There were some tiny roach nymps there as well.
We were already hunting for roaches for around 2 hours in the heat and had only found 2
Pycnoscelus surinamensis which I can find by the hundreds in my own yard. It was very disappointing that the only "different" roaches that we found at that park were under that cardboard with the Black widow.
Anyway, I was trying to coax the spider to move so I could try to catch those very small and fast nymphs. She instead made a run for our supplies that were on the ground where my daughter was standing and I killed her out of fear for my child.
All of those yet unidentified nymphs got away during my murdering episode and we went home with nothing interesting that day. :angry: My daughter was angry with me and cried because I killed the spider, I cried too. I feel that the spider wouldn't have been a danger to us, and could have lived if we just walked away and left her and those nymphs, but I was greedy and really wanted some roaches at the end of our disappionting hunt.
That was the only Black widow that I have ever seen in South Florida, and also one of the most beautiful spiders I have ever seen.
I feel that I have learned an important lesson, and next time I encounter such a situation, I will walk away without harming anything.
If something that venomous is in my home I will kill it, but I let the Cellar spiders live here and even chase them away from their corners so I can clean up all of the dead ants and other pests that they kill. They will go back and make new webs in strategic places where ants enter our home. I like that since I have been letting them stay, and not sweeping them up with the rest of the trash, I have no ant problems in my home, like I used to.
