Oh Great – It’s a Brown Widow
Lucky me…. not only do I keep finding black widow spiders, but now I found a brown widow. And writing about spiders really, really isn’t that interesting to me.
But in the spirit of being sure everyone knows what these things look like, here’s the brown dude(ette) munching in a wasp.
This guy looked so related to black widows that I killed it just in case.
It took me quite a bit of internet searching before I figured this out. It’s quite an attractive spider but it looked so much like the black widows except for the color that I killed it right after taking the picture. I didn’t want to have to go looking for it later.
Info on the brown widows came from a (drum roll please) UF website – yay Gators: http://sarasota.extension.ufl.edu/ipm/brownwidow.htm
Now, just for my (and your) info, here’s a link with good pictures of brown recluse spiders: http://www.medicinenet.com/black_widow_brown_recluse_pictures_slideshow/article.htm
Interesting — I never even heard of a brown widow spider before. That link at the bottom has some good info and I think the photo of the trash can with the spider egg sacs are brown widow spider egg sacs b/c they have the spiky things on them.
Good job looking at the pictures of the spiders in the links.. I’m always freaked out by what poisonous spiders look like. I’ve got those spiky egg sacs all around (http://www.carolbertrand.com/76black-widow-on-my-front-porch) and the spider in the nests looks a lot like a black widow, but it COULD be a brown one w/o the spots.. ??
Anyway – I’m tired of writing about spiders!!