Now Look What I found Under the Kids Slide!
 

I called the bug man and he gave the house and yard a double dose. That was two days ago. I told him that I killed a Black Widow under my grill and another in the wheel well of the Targa. I was checking out the backyard yoys before the kids went to play on the and found a rather large and impressive web. I tipped it over and this is what I found - still very much alive.

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She was eceptionall protective of the egg sac and fought to the bitter end but alas, you can't fight chemicals. Today mrs Black Widow, my toxins were stronger then yours!

Check out the size! I preserved her in isopropanol with the egg sac. She still has a web on it!. She is pictured here with the two others I saved. Notice the 1/2 socket for scale. Yes, I am a geek! The neighbors kids are now saving various spiders for me. We had a mini spider seminar and they now know what a Black Widow looks like, also shared pics of a Brown Recluse. Knowledge is power.

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I deployed a few of those mouse glue traps in the garage and caught all kinds of cool bug types including 2 fairly large spiders - no BW though. I went on a nighttime hunt a couple weeks ago and got several of those. Have not come across anymore since.

My little girl is becoming a geek as well. Here she is with a bug vac examining a dead wolf spider she caught. This is also the type that my wife killed with a bare foot and picked up with her hand!
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My little one went on to capture 2 more "wolfys" as she calls them. Maybe someday she will have her own TV show!

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1124049087.jpg :D

Thats scary !

I guess she could have picked a safer back yard. We all know the LubeMaster knows his chemicals ! ;)

I have always envied your climate, but on the other hand our cold climate saves us from poisonous animals.

I was talking to one of the tech guys tat works in the lab - he does the insecticides and he told me he was bit twice by them. Unless your very young or very old or are allergic then the worse thing is that you will feel like dying for about 3 days but you don't. He said it was the worse thing he went through - very sore (for weeks after) and right after he got bit that night and for two more nights he could barely breath and was very sore all over with high fevor and chills. Said it maid the flu feel like a common cold. I'll do without thanks!

I killed my first black widow this morning. She was hanging around in the corner of the garage next to the lawnmower.

It's cool that you're teaching the kids what to look for, it should take some of the fear/mystery out of the little bastards (the spiders, not the kids). I wish someone had done that for me, because I lived with an insane fear of spiders until I was 18. When I turned 18, i went to college and my roommate was determined to get me over that fear, so we bought a tarantula. I'm not afeared anymore :D

Yepers,
Had to get the hell out of A.Z. with all the scorpions.
Now here in N.C. its snakes...

My daughter also has a bug vac. She loves it. Here in AZ bugs are just a fact of life. They were here first and will be here long after we're gone.

I got up a few days ago and my daughter ran to me and said she "had something" for me. My wife found this guy under a box. She just set the jar over him until I got up. Turns out he was dead.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1124071243.jpg

This specimen lives in our garage. So far we've just left her alone. She's huge and there's always a pile of dead bugs under the web. As long as she remains in her spot she's welcome to stay. The garage door track is a good reference for how big she is.

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Lee - holy crap! I can see the fangs on that thing! Do you know what kind it is? The Scorpion is scary. Those things have an attitiude. Our neighbor once found a big black one in the living room. She thought it was a dog toy and was about to pick it up will it reared around on her. Her husband wasn't tpoo happy about having to kill it and clean up the 3 pounds of ***** she left on the carpet!

For the most part, we let the spiders be. We have a glassed in 'sun room' section of our kitchen, and there are webs all over outside. No questions that they are decreasing the bugs, because we watch them catching them eating them all night.

Crikey, Lee, it's about time to name that sucker "Shelob" and start sending the slower Orcs her direction. Sometimes I'm really happy to live in cold places.

I don't know what kind of spider that is living in the garage. I just went out to get a close look and she was gone... probably out hunting. She's always back in the morning.

The scorpions bug me the most (pun intended). When my daughter was at the crawling stage, I watched her crawl right by one as she came down the hall toward me.

We don't have as many now as we did when we first moved here. When we first move in we had 2-4 scorpions per week inside the house during the summer. Now it's more like 1-2 per month. It's a little easier knowing my daughter is old enough to steer clear of them.

I went on the offensive and went after them outside. Sprays don't work against them, but only kill their food - crickets, cockroaches, and spiders. The drill is that you take your black light in one hand and rubber mllet in the other. The scorpions glow bright green under the black light and are very easy to find in the dark. It's rare that I go into the backyard at night without at least one kill. A guy I know built an expensive house on desert preserve land and ended up moving because they had so many scorpions. He said he counted over 50 on his back wall one night!
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1124084418.jpg

LMAO. Thats a damn riot...

My last Recluse spider trap check yielded:

4 Behind the refrigerator
1 in the Master bath
7 in trap 1 of family room.
4 in trap 2 of family room, with 2 dead ones near trap:confused:
4 in basement bathroom
1 in the understairs storage

I haven't checked the under bed traps, or the theater room trap as of yet. And this was about 2 weeks ago, so I'm sure the numbers are higher.

However....... The amount of Recluse I actually see moving around has diminished greatly, I think the population is actually down, and not because of the traps.

I think you are seeing the palps, and not fangs.

most likely, but geez, it still creeps me out...

A Wolfy, I think. I wondered why her back sparkled, then found out they carry the babies on their backs...(shudder)

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1124335156.jpg

LOL! When we moved into our new home I happened to be looking out my son's room window one night. The neighbors were outside by their pool freaking out, stomping and the cement like crazy. Saw them the following day and they told me that they killed a huge spider and a bunch of baies scattered about and totalling freak'd them.

Same spider my wife killed with her bare foot and picked up with her hand! (I know I said it earlier but it still wigs my ***** out!)

Jeez guys...STOP IT!...The only thing worse would be a clown threadhttp://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1124339363.jpg

How about a spider in whiteface?