“We’re all humanary stew if we don’t pledge allegiance to… the black widow!”
[cue guitar riff...]

Yes. Apparently I’m also stupid.

I kinda wanna puke now.

Still, we had a Hallowe’en washout – rain all evening and no trick-or-treaters (Yay! All the more chocolate for me!).

Is it just on my street, or is it everywhere that kids are coming around up to 4 days before Hallowe’en instead of on Hallowe’en itself?

I put this inset pic together a while back for a blog post, but decided I already had too many about spiders anyway. Shown here is a female and male Southern Black Widow, pretty close to scale (I mean, between the two, not life size.) I actually found them not five feet apart on the side of my duplex. They are pretty common here in NC, too.

http://wading-in.net/Add/Mom-n-Dad.jpg

If you look close, you can see the markings on the female’s back (away from you) that denote the Southern variant, and the little beads of apparently yucky-tasting web fluid that she emitted when I nudged her into the light, one of their other defenses.

The male does indeed have only six legs – they may have already encountered one another at this point. She was removed to a location far from the house, but the male allowed to stay, since they’re harmless to people.

But my creepiest spider pic was used for a blog post – you have been warned.