I've read that any insect that has red on it should be left alone, or removed very carefully just like the one in @Frank Sanoica 's photo. Then I read about the brown recluse. I think that's where I would not be able to recognize one because the spiders I see are either brown or black. Spiders are very quick too if you have ever tried to kill one. On the funnier side of this thought, why don't they just spit out their web juice and fly away?
With black widows, as in the human species, it's only the female that's poisonous, and you're unlikely to die of a black widow bite, although it has happened. I think I've told this story somewhere in the forum before but, since I can't find it, I'll tell it again. When I was a very young man, I was renting an apartment with a friend of mine. This was in Cypress, California, I think. One day, we found a black widow in the cabinet under the sink in our bathroom. Since she wasn't doing any harm, we let her be. Whenever we came into the bathroom, we'd look to see that she was safely in her place, and it seemed that she always was. Live and let live, as long as she was behaving herself, we let her be. She never seemed to move from the cabinet, where she had a web. As someone mentioned, black widows aren't very good at making webs so it was kind of a crappy looking web. We wondered what she was living on because we kept the place pretty clean, so it wasn't crawling with insects or anything. Yet, day or night, she seemed to be in her web. Then one day, I saw a bunch of tiny spiders on the wall in the bathroom. Looking more closely, there were hundreds of them. It seemed like thousands at the time, but I suppose it was hundreds. Clearly, this arrangement was no longer going to work, since she had had babies. We caught the mom on a piece of newspaper and evicted her. She gave us no trouble, simply hanging onto the newspaper until we shook her off outdoors. Then we evicted as many of the babies as we could, and bought some spray for any that were lingering. So much for spider-human relationships. Mom was okay, but her kids were into everything.
@Ken Anderson , I'm OK with the little house spiders but If It's a black widow, I'd have to kill it. My brother was bitten by a black widow and nearly died. He was hospitalized for many days.
@Shirley Martin This testimonial serves to verify the danger inherent to Black Widow presence. I've seen them often, and oftyen more close-up than I'd relish, moving boxes or some other activity in a little-used area, to find their ragged webs present. Frank
Don't much give a ding-dang about all that coexistence blather. If something invades my space that can hurt me, its gotta die. The house spiders I leave alone until they bite me, then its game on and time to break out the R-A-I-D: https://www.ebay.com/i/142712912246?chn=ps I never seen any Black Widows here. Had them in Kentucky. Spiders hunt around at night, when you're asleep, in bed, in the dark! If a house spider doesn't respect your bed, ain't no reason to think a poisonous spider would. Difference being a house spider bites you while you're asleep, you wake up cussing, have to try to get back to sleep, and in the morning inspect the damage. Black Widow bites you while you are asleep, you may not wake up. Had a cousin got bit a couple times before an uncle saw it on him and killed it. Said he never felt it bite. Took him to the hospital, but he was one of them lucky ones that seem immune. Other than two big red marks and two tiny blisters. Kids and oldsters don't always survive it.
When I was a paramedic and we got a call from someone who had been bitten by a black widow spider, when we called it into the hospital, unless the patient was a young child or very ill, they would tell us that it wasn't an emergency and that the patient should go an outpatient clinic rather than the emergency room. Source: Britannica
Well, when a girl spider and boy spider meet and like each other they get married. Then the boy spider and girl spider see that they are different and then they get to know each other much better. Then the mommy spider eats the daddy spider.. The end.
That's a legitimate concern. They are supposed to be nocturnal so they are moving about while you're sleeping. I think, though, that black widows don't go very far. When we had our adopted black widow spider in the cabinet under our bathroom sink, whenever we got up during the night to use the bathroom, she was still there. Although she could easily leave if she wanted to, since there was a large hole around where the plumbing pipes went in, she seemed content in her web. I had another spider, not a black widow but some harmless jumping type of spider, on the wall in my home office when I lived in Texas. I was okay with it being there, since it seemed to stay on the wall, and it was usually a wall on the far side of my desk. Then one day, it came toward me while I was in there. I was watching it, then all of a sudden it jumped from the wall onto my leg. Maybe it thought we were friends, but instinctively, I swatted it. I felt kind of bad about it for a few seconds, and I really wouldn't have intentionally killed it. My hand just sort of acted on its own.
I hired a plumber to do some work on our water pipes, which are in a crawl space under our house. He told us he wouldn't come back because there were wolf spiders under there. Personally, I think he just didn't like crawling around in the crawl space, since it's kind of creepy down there and there are places where you have to slide in on your back, which is claustrophobic. I have been in the crawl space many times over the years, before and after he complained about wolf spiders, and have never seen any. After he told me that, of course I was specifically looking for spiders, and didn't see any. I have since made it far less creepy down there. Although it's still a closed space, I now have a new vapor barrier and tarps over the spaces that are most likely to have to be accessed. Plus, before putting the vapor barrier down, I pulled the old nasty stuff out, and put a bunch of diatomaceous earth down there to control any insects. I'm not sure if it works on spiders, though.
I took a job in Colorado, Canon City specifically, when I finished college at UNLV. Rented a little house there, it was summer, hot, I was there alone, newly divorced, my Mother left behind in Vegas to handle selling the house. A few days into the job, I awoke early at dawn's light, lying on my back in bed, and saw something directly above me on the ceiling. Grabbed my glasses, and never flew out of bed as fast before in my life! Upside down, crawling on the ceiling, was this: I had no idea scorpions lived in mountainous, cool climates, nor that they could walk on walls and ceilings! That evening, sitting watching T-V, I felt something crawl across my fare foot; you guessed it! Place was full of them, they spent the heat of day beneath the house in the crawl space (as I found upon looking in there). Complained to the landlady, a widow, who proclaimed I should see the Tarantulas which live on the "big hog-back" west of town; they're "big as teacups"! I got out of that house as quick as possible. Never was stung by one, fortunately. Frank
Forgot about them short squat jumpers built like a tank. Another critter in Kentucky that's not here. You were lucky it didn't give you a farewell bite. They got a powerful one that will raise a red bump near 2inch size, and will throb for days. Feels like a mud dapper but lasts longer.
I hear tell these varmints are in SoCal. If they ever colonize this area it will be time to move. Anything too big for a flyswatter or can of Raid to deal with, is too big to deal with.
Scorpions stings are painful, but the only ones with the potential of being dangerous in the United States are the Arizona bark scorpions, found in the southwestern United States. Fatalities are rare, but they are more dangerous than black widow spiders.
@Ken Anderson A neighbor of mine in Phoenix did landscaping, which often required trimming of Palm Trees. Turns out, the heart-wood of Palms, in the very top center where new fronds issue forth, are a favorite gathering place for scorpions, as the moisture there attracts insects, which the scorpions love to eat. He claimed to have been stung numerous times. Frank