Spiders are good….really!

I know that most of you don’t believe that spiders are good…but they really are. Really!

Just like birds, bats, snakes, lizards etc., spiders eat lots of insects that would overrun us without some natural controls. Spiders are just another part of the food chain…they just don’t happen to be as cute and cuddly as bluebirds, for instance.

As most people know, spiders are not insects. Insects have 6 legs…spiders have 8. Spiders are Arachnids and they are related to some other unloved cousins such as ticks, chiggers, scorpions, etc.

Unlike ticks and chiggers, spiders don’t really want to bite humans. Spiders bite humans in self defense, not to suck our blood. The bad news is that almost all spiders have venom. The good news is that very few spiders have fangs capable of piercing human skin.

But there are two spiders here in Fairfield Glade, Tennessee that can hurt you. For that reason you need to be aware of these guys…but you don’t need to live in fear of them.

You have heard of both….the Brown Recluse and the Black Widow.

First the Brown Recluse! This is a shy spider that likes to hide during the day and hunt at night. It is usually tan to brown with a darker fiddle shape on its back. With legs extended it is about the size of a quarter. Almost all bites occur when the spider is encountered hiding in old shoes, old clothes, or in seldom used storage areas. They are reported to particularly like to hide in and around cardboard. The spider bites in self defense when pressed against human skin. The venom can cause local tissue damage (sometimes serious) but rarely are Brown Recluse bites fatal. So just shake out those old shoes and clothes, especially those not worn regularly and you should be fine.

The infamous Black Widow is a beautiful spider. The female is usually patent leather shiny black with the red or orange “hourglass” marking on her abdomen. The ones that I have seen have a body about the size of a blueberry and with their legs extended they cover a quarter or larger.
They get their name from the belief that the female always kills and eats the male after mating. This sometimes happens but usually the male escapes to mate again. Thank goodness the kill and eat idea didn’t catch on.

Southern Black Widows are most often found outside in old logs, rock piles, wood piles, and in crawlspaces. Northern Black Widows are also found here and they often build their web in trees. They both have a very messy looking web, not the beautiful symmetric webs that some spiders weave. The females rarely leave their web. The one in the pictures here had a web under some loose bark on a dead log in the woods behind my house. They are in some of your yards also.

Fortunately, Black Widows usually retreat when they encounter humans and don’t bite. Unfortunately, if they do bite, their venom is 15 times as powerful as rattlesnake venom; but they can only inject a small amount. A very small percentage of Black Widow bites do cause human fatalities, so if you are bitten, go to a hospital and if possible take the critter (dead, preferably) with you.

The way to keep both the Brown Recluse and the Black Widow away from your house is to keep a clean yard and house. If you remove the insects that these spiders eat and you keep debris and storage places cleaned up you will reduce the chances of an encounter with a bad spider.

As for all the rest of those spiders….think of them as our organic friends, eating insects and helping us to keep down the cost of buying more chemicals for insect control. Spiders are good…..really!