Brown Widow Spider
Did you know that in Florida, there are four types of Widow Spiders? They are the Northern Black Widow spider, the Southern Widow Spider, the red Widow Spider and the Brown Widow Spider which will discuss in more detail below. Although the venom of these spiders are not as toxic as the Black Widow, they are still very painful and can cause serious injury if not treated.
Because brown widow spiders (latrodectus geometricus) can vary from light tan to dark brown or almost black and may have differing markings such as white, black, yellow, brown and even orange on the back of their abdomen, they are very hard to recognize! The picture below is of the red widow spider.
On the bottom of the abdomen you’ll notice the hourglass marking but it will be colored yellow or orange. The Egg Sac of the brown widow spider is not that same as other widows and has pointed projections much like the old sea mines.
If you have pictures of this spider, or believe you have been bitten by a Brown Widow, please post your comments below and send the pictures to the email address located on the bottom of this page.
Written by Jim on June 17th, 2007 with
403 comments.
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Just bitten by a brown widow spider in my sleep…the area swelled up and got very red and feverish…then I got very anxious, my blood pressure shot up, cold sweats, pain in muscles…stabbing and hot pains throughout my body, blurred vision, shortness of breath and feels like a very bad flu with a bad headache and stabbing stomach pains. Its no fun and whats more is there are multiple varities of widow spiders…most people don’t realize this, as I didn’t until I researched it a little…even if its little, but has a big abdomen…leave it alone!
The black widow venom is 15 times as potent as a rattle snake. Though it may inject less venom into an unfortunate victim. The brown widow’s venom is reportedly 2 times as potent as a black widow but it is considered less dangerous because it is a timid spider that doesn’t defend it’s web. The red widow is the most venomous of all the widow spiders but is temperamental to climate and is only found in south florida. According to Jeff Hollenbeck at bugguide.net who was bitten by a red widow says this about it, “A clear lymph fluid also oozes from the pores surrounding the bite. The muscle spasms are permanent, (at least my case) reoccurring several times a year for several minutes at a time.”
Ive been finding these brown widows all around the outside of my house lately and have a few questions. First, the ones I’m finding have a pink hour glass on them and not the orange or yellow described above have you ever heard of that before? Second, I have looked at different sites about how toxic their venom is and they all say something different. How dangerous are they really? I’ll try and get a picture of one and send it to you. Thanks.
Sorry, no photo. 78 y.o. man living in Naples, FL was bitten by something about 4-6 mos. ago. Didn’t pay attention to it as it continued to grow w/ infection. Within 1 mo. after bite, lost sight in one eye (continuously going from one Opthimologist to another, test after test with NO specific results), then irregular heartbeat (back to emergency for meds. to regulate) now walking w/ use of walker. 2 mos. ago showed the bite to regular Dr. (now the size of “tearing a dollar bill in half”, quite deep w/ black center surrounded by progessive inner very pink to dark pink/red outer ring. Dr. drew circle around it stating: if it goes outside the circle he drew..your in trouble!? Thank you for comments and information (I believe he’s very much in d e e p trouble).
Bite by Widow spider believed to be Brown Widow by doctors. Had Exteme fatigue, Weakness, Dizziness, Bad headache, Extreme body aches that led into chills, muscle tremors then to seizure. Per medics, became extremely hypotensive, short of breathe, altered level of conciousness. Emergent transport to hospital. The spider venom not only sent me into anaphalactic shock but also managed to make into my blood system and attacked my platelets. Platelet level dropped to 35. In hospital for a week on pain med drips, blood pressure med because of hypotension issue, and monitoring because of lack of blood platelets. Was very weak for along time after leaving hospital with strange body pains. I survived the Brown Widow Spider bite barely.
i saw a red widow in the shower once but i mushed it
i thought the black widow is the most venomous.i live in Kentucky and i know for a fact I’ve seen a red and brown widow, and i have been studying them. i saw a red widow in a pine forest, and a brown widow twice on side of a building and one on a guttering.
Found two of these brown widow spiders in my house after cleaning up some cluttered areas, I live in central California and have never seen these before. All I’ve ever seen were the black ones. It didn’t seem too irritated when i stopped it with a piece of paper though to snap a quick picture. I’m still not fond of them around if they are as bad as they are said to be because I’m 7 months pregnant:S
My son was bitten in the abdomen and didn’t realize how bad the bite was because it was just a hard red bump. When it started to burn and felt swollen and hard, i took him to the doctor and he had to have it opened and drained. When we went back for a check up the doctor told us that more blackened tissue where the venom had damaged would have to be removed-he is scheduled for surgery tomorrow. He is a young adult who works outside in Ky and the bite just didn’t look that infected, however his symptoms quickly worsened with body aches and pain,nausea, headaches, and slight fever. Until this happened, we didn’t even know there was such a spider as a brown widow.I just hope my son recovers.
I just caught one of these little brown spiders in my bedroom closet looks like she made a web in one of the corners there was a cock roach in the web about 5-6 times the size of the spider if thats any indication of how poisonous they are I would not want to get bit.Most all the descriptions are accurate in that its a very docile spider she didn’t try to escape like the black widow. they bolt usually if your shadow even passes over them. she is small about the size of my pinky nail with a very large thorax kind of a mottled white and brown color with a dark brown hourglass definitely a female and definitely a widow have not been able to find a photo online of this exact spider
I found a brown widow on my porch today with its egg sack. She didnt seem to get upset about us moving her into a plastic container and isnt realy acting against the other spiders that are in it with her.We put her egg sack into the container with her thinking that it may hatch. (maybe get some babies) Kids and i have been watching her all day and havent realy seen any movement at all. Its funny that something so small can hurt some one so much. Is there anything that i can do with this spider other than killing it. Maybe a place that we can take it to?
I had a spider living in the siding by my front door since before Christmas, and called her my pet spider “Charlotte”. A few weeks ago I saw a white sack in the web, covered with little pointy things. Another sack appeared, and then a third today.
I finally decided to search the net to figure it out and found that the egg sack definitely meant it was a brown widow. Some websites say they are very dangerous so I had no choice but to kill her and her egg sacks.
I bought some spray, and as spraying her she spun around and I was able to see the extremely bright marking on her abdomen, showing me that she was definitely a brown widow.
I then searched all around my apartment building and found one other brown widow and egg sack. Although she never bothered me for months, I couldn’t risk her biting me, or dealing with the thousands of babies that were about to hatch.
RIP Charlotte
I work for a P.C. company in south-central Georgia. We started noticing the Brown Widow around July ‘07. Since then, their population seems to have gotten much heavier. We found 17 brown widows and dozens of egg sacs on a riding lawn mower. There was a total of 26 at that one residence.
Living in southern California, have a lot of brown Widows here now. With kids it’s a bit scary. The experts say not that dangerous, but the comments above belay that.
i might have got bit by this it was brown with a yellow circle on its back it roamed my cheek when i was standing but distracted i thought it was an itch I don’t know if it bit anywhere else but it bit my cheek its been a day and only slight cheek swelling I don’t know what spider this is though for sure…
Last year killed what I believed to be 10 Black Widows on and around the house in south Louisiana. With some outside spring cleaning today, noted some “widow shaped” spiders, but all 4 were brown and with egg sacks. An A/C Tech told us last year about Brown Widows, but I was skeptical (only believing in the Black Widow and Brown Recluse spiders in the U.S.)
With the information contained on the FL website, and several recent news articles regarding Brown Widow migration into LA, I am more convinced. They are poor web builders, like their Black cousins, but seem to play ‘possum’ when provoked. It’s an odd characteristic for an arachnid. Irregardless, there are 4 more dead spiders, and countless little ones in egg sacks.
Question though, how can they be eradicated? Is there an effective spray or powder?
Thanks!
A couple of years ago my husband got bitten by a spider while we were sleeping. We live in central fla. Never saw the spider, never felt the bites. He had a total of six bites. On his hands, arm and on one of his thighs.
The thigh bite was the worst, swelling up to the size of a tennis ball. That bite was drained several times by the doctor. Nausea, fever, stiffness were bad for several days. I also had a bite near my arm pit. It never amounted to much as I had, had surgery at the time of the bite and the antibiotics used for surgery were still in my system.
Am a Florida cracker who has been in woods, old dirty barns full of spiders, lived on lakes, boated, skied, mowed tall grass in fields, rides horses in forests. Never been bitten until now. And bitten in bed by possibly a brown widow spider of all things! Go figure!
Hi there,
I live in South Africa in the city of Port Elizabeth. I recently moved here, and moved into a town house that had just been built.
I found in the garage, that there was a web with hundreds of newly hatched spiders, but thought nothing of it. just sprayed them with a poison spray and that was it. Now, I find my house infested with Brown Widow spiders.
Just this weekend i went on a spider hunt, and killed (burned) about 25 medium sized widows and 2 full sized as well as about 12 egg sacks.
I have had close encounters with 4 different full grown widows as well. What is the best way to get rid of them? I need to do something soon, before i also end up in hospital…
I found an unusual spider this afternoon inside a web under a shelf on my pavilion on the patio. There was also a light brown egg sac about 3/8 of an inch in diameter covered with little points. Here are a few pictures:
I had never seen one like that before. We live in Orange Co, CA, and have lots of black widows around here, so I’m very familiar with those. The web funneled into the corner, and there was a spider at the point.
Using a stick, I removed the web, and it was a tough job. The spider fell to the ground curled up in a ball, and it looked as if I might have accidentally stuck it with the stick and killed it. However, when I showed my husband the spider and poked it, it uncurled its legs and grabbed the stick.
With the legs extended, the size was about 1 to 1 1/4 inches. The abdomen was huge, so I sprayed it. Later, I turned it over, and there was an orange hourglass on the underside.
I have never seen a brown widow before and didn’t know they existed until I googled it and found your website. I am sending pictures to your email.
Thanks for your pictures on the web site and for the info.
We live in Orange Cty, CA and have seen plenty of Black Widows. We have 4 kids and go on regular evening spider hunts to try to control them. It always erks me to see them make home in the fender wells of the kids quads and tricycles. At least we have figured out how to find them… check out any chaotic low webs just after dark with a flashlight and there she is…
This year however we have begun to see the spiked egg sacs and today killed about 7 brown widow around our yard (mostly on the kids toys and play ground!!) Anyway, I am wondering if any of you can share more about their behavior so we know what to look for.
They sure do seem to be procreative little boogers!! Lots of sacs everywhere. The webs aren’t always low like we’ve seen with the Black ones. Do they come out at night? What do the males look like? Will we begin finding them in our garage now too? Uuuggh… got the hibby jibbies!
Hi I was just wondering if the Brown Widow spider was ever found in Central Europe? Becuase in our cabin there is a spider that looks a bit like the ones in the pictures. I havent done anything with it yet but I’m a little worried.
Thanks for any news
P.S. I don’t think it’s a brown widow spider but the similarity is there, it sits on the window sill in the crack in the wall. When ever i walk by it it hids there.
I found my first one working on an A/C unit in Baton Rouge, LA. last week. I spotted those unique spiked egg sacs long before I spotted the spider. I found the one female and about 5-6 egg sacs. I had never heard of the brown widows until now.
Everybody seems to be spooked by the brown widow, but it’s relatively harmless. They’ll bite if you bother their web, just like the black widow, but there’s easy ways to avoid their inconvenient bite. If you have benches, stools, or tables outdoors, periodically wear some work gloves, turn them over and insepect. Basements… a simple plug in tool will keep more than just spiders out. Attics, always difficult, but wear long sleeves and gloves and you’ll be fine. And if a creepy crawly is someplace you don’t want it to be, and a paper towel isn’t an option… Windex or Lemon Pledge will make them very unhappy where they are and will move one.
-Tony -Arachnologist
I found some spikey white egg sacs in a spider web in the corner of our wharehouse, but the small spider near the sac didn’t really look like the brown widow pictures. The abdomen was much smaller and not nearly as round as in the pictures. What other spiders produce this spikey white egg sac?
I live in San Diego California, I noticed 4 egg sacks outside my bedroom window. They have been there for over a month. I have never seen the female spider that laid them. After searching the net, I realize they are Brown Widow Spiders egg sacs. They are white, round, and prickly. What is the best way to get rid of them? Help.
I live in So. California (Long Beach). A few weeks ago we found a dead black spider with an bright orange hourglass on the abdomine behind a planter. I was hunting for bugs for an injured lizard my kids wanted to keep. On another midnight bug hunt, I discovered an live black widow spider. We have finally done a spider hunt on the undersides of my plastic plant pots and found an army of widows, more brown ones than black. They all had the reddish orange hour glass.
The largest of the spiders were protecting egg sacks which match the spiky ones shown when you Google “Brown Widow Spiders”. (I wanted to take a picture, but my husband scoffed.) It was creepy because there were so many (more than 15), and so many egg sacks per spider. I think the record was seven for one spider. We have lived in our house for ten years and this is the first time I’ve ever seen either variety of widow, black or brown. Could it be global warming?
I’m in Central Florida. My yard is infested with brown widows. I haven’t killed them yet because, well, I just feel awful about killing them. However, they are starting to make homes on my clothes line! We do not own a dryer, so the line is the only way we can dry our clothes. I’m starting to get very nervous of putting my clothes on in the mornings for fear of getting bitten. These spiders don’t seem very shy to me…they live on my back door that we open and close many times throughout the day. And we’re always hanging clothes up outside, so you’d think they’d make their home elsewhere. Now there’s one living behind my window at work.
I don’t want to kill them, and I definitely don’t want to use some kind of toxic chemical spray…but I’m not sure what else to do. I have a little dog that goes in and out all the time, two cats that like to kill bugs, a husband who is deathly allergic to most insect bites, and we’re going to start trying for a baby soon. Logic, I guess, says to get rid of the spiders!
But I’d like to know first how dangerous they really are. I know they are not aggressive, don’t inject as much venom as black widows, and don’t defend their web…but if I did happen to get bitten, could I die? Would I go straight to the hospital and they’d fix things right away? Would I be in agony for months? Could my leg fall off? I just can’t find this info anywhere online. Grrr…wish the spiders would just move elsewhere!
I live in Norwalk, Southern California. We keep a ping pong table in the back yard and I desided to move it into my room for easier access. I cleaned it up as best I could and removed all the visible cob-webs, then moved it into my room. Later that day when I went to bed I found a brown widow hanging from a web suspended between my bed and the ping pong table. I scared it and it ran back to the ping pong table and hid inside a round tubing support beam for the table. I sprayed some bug spray up the tubing and one by one 6 brown widows fell out of the tubing. I moved the table back outside at almost one in the morning and I’ll be sleeping on the couch tonight and taking tomorrow off of work to clean my room out and re-wash all my clean clothes just in case. I’ve been bitten by a black widow in the past so this really freaked me out.
I have come across two brown widows in the Tampa Bay, FL area in the past year or so. One in a friend’s garage in Tampa (saw the hourglass and the egg sacs, looked it up on line, and alas, a brown widow). The friend insists it was a black widow (found it at night and destroyed an hour later with a vacuum – evidence gone!), but the egg sacs were definitely of a brown widow. Today I just found one in my mailbox in Dunedin, FL including a web with 5 egg sacks (I just moved in). Made me realize that I wouldn’t want to be a mail carrier around here! I have some photos I can send.
Brown Widow? Geez. I have the feeling that spiders are all over me now that I have finished reading this! Yuck! I was just spraying for bull (wood) ants and saw this spider hanging from our oak tree at eye level. The wind moved it and I could see the hourglass figure on the underside of the spider, used ant spray on it and put it in a container. I examined it and came looking for what it was when I found pictures of the spider in the jar. Then I saw the egg sacs.
I have egg sacs ALL over my yard and even one in my van door (when you open the door you can see it…it is recent and I thought it was pollen…yucky heebie jeebies!!!). I WILL be taking some pictures and I can send them. I’ll take the pictures tomorrow when the sun is up as I don’t want any surprise attacks. I’m going to have my husband watch my back…literally. I’m in Tampa…and I live about 3/4 of a mile from St. Joseph’s Hospital…off of Armenia, a few blocks south of Hillsborough Ave. After looking this up, I talked to my son and showed him the pictures.
He said that there are eggs sacs ALL over the yard by the hundreds. I’m going to need quite a few cans of spray by the looks of it. For the record (basically for those who don’t like killing spiders…) I have a severely allergic child due to immunity issues and needs an epi-pen for a simple mosquito bite…I’d hate to think of what a brown widow would do to him.
I live just outside Indianapolis Indiana and came home through the garage on a very humid day to find anywhere between 10 and 15 spiders on the garage floor, not moving. I checked the biggest one out…light brown color, on the abdomen it had a think black ring and a yellow spot on the inside. The spot doesn’t seem to be in any specific shape, just a little yellow spot inside a black ring. I wasn’t sure what kind of spider this was…brown widow is the closest I’ve seen so far. It looks to be more of a mix between a brown recluse and a brown widow.
I live in Charleston South Carolina and I worked at a local animal shelter. Outside around pretty much every window, door and kennel I was finding these weird egg sacs. They were a light tan with what looked like spikes all over them. I began to investigate them further and started seeing the spiders themselves. The normal size for a black widow but it was a greyish brown and had little brown stripes over the abdomen. I noticed the orange hourglass so I asked around and people were telling me it was a false widow. Me myself I had never heard of a brown widow at the time decided to do some internet search since we all know you can find anything on there and learned it was a brown widow and it was still venomous to humans. Glad I have severe aracnaphobia and took time out of my day everyday to spray and squish every spider and egg sac I could find. Don’t know if I can help anything with this other then a confermation of the spider in coastal South Carolina.
was bitten last tuesday (7/7/08),caught the little pain and now her and her eggs are now in a jar of rubbing alcohol. i was bitten on left ring finger. finger and hand swelled up. no pain till hours later my for arm started to fell tight
I live in Tampa, FL. I came across my first brown widow about a year ago on the outside of my bedroom window. It had the shape of a black widow with an hourglass on its abdomen. Intrigued, I did some research to determine that it was a brown widow, which I had never even heard of before. My wife was pregnant, and fearing that she could be bitten, I did a thorough search of my yard. I found thirteen brown widows that day (along with multiple egg sacks). I killed the ones I could find and had a lawn pest control service come and spray. Even though the pest control service comes every 2 months, I’m still finding these things all over the place (so far, at least 4 dozen).
About 2 weeks ago, my wife noticed the tell tale web under the back seat of her car. I killed a widow with egg sacks under the seat where my now 9 month old son’s car seat is hooked up. Where are they going to turn up next? It truly worries me that he, or my wife, or my dog will one day be bitten by one of these things. I HATE spiders!
subject( brown widow) their are different ways of determining a spider of being a brown widow, they don’t always have a well defined hourglass on their abdomen,they can have just a , orange,red,or yellowish stripe in place, most of them have black bands on their legs, with a big abdomem an little head, in fact the venom of the brown widow , is Moore toxic then the black widow ,but the (black widow )injects Moore venom ,making her Moore of a threat if bitten.
This has been living in our bathroom for a few weeks, but it runs and hides when the dogs are near.
I never knew there were other types of widows until I got curious about this new resident in the house.
I live in San Diego, CA and have found several brown widow spiders this past week living in my small patio/back yard. Last year I found a single mature black female over the course of a whole summer in my shed. This week I have found two spiders that I thought were immature blacks, but after reading this string of posts realized they are mature female brown widows. They both have a bright red hour glass on their abdomen with unique brown and yellow markings.
I don’t know too much about the species, but the webs were in plain sight on a table and kid’s chair. They both had a single male in them and several baby female spiders close by and even an immature female just a few inches in her own nest almost like a small family. I have also found several egg sacks with the indicative “points.” They seem to be coming in droves this week even after I sprayed down the back yard with insecticide.
My inner child’s curiousity was peaked and I put them in some plastic jars, while I enlightened myself on what exacly they are. If anyone could use them to study or anything you can have them otherwise I will probably get rid of them later this week.
Hi,
I have found a few black widow in our yard over the past years…
About a year ago, I found my first brown widow in the garage by the plug outlet, I was tipped off by the spikey egg sacs. Now, a year later, they are EVERYWHERE! is there some way to get rid of them?
Our 13 year old dog,Jasmine, died last Wednesday suddenly. We thought it was old age, but we had killed what seems to be brown widows in our back yard. And since she died we have killed more than 15 widows. She died having problems breathing and I am convinced she died from a widow bite.
I’ve relocated to FL recently and while staying with my sister discovered an odd egg sac underneath one of her deck chairs. She swore up and down it was a brown recluse sac (because a pest control guy told her sister-in-law that when he discovered the same egg sacs at her FL home). Anyway…I went on line and looked up the egg sac and it’s definitely the brown widow sac. We sprayed the chair and thought we got rid of it.
Well…..now I am in my new house and my sister gave me a few deck chairs….including the one we found the egg sac on. I just went outside and there’s a fat little brown widow under the chair, and a nice fresh egg sac.
These critters are pretty resiliant. After a lot of research I did find out they are indeed very dangerous and even though I have no spider phobias (I love insects & bugs, always fascinated me) I’m not real comfortable having them camp out all around my new house. I’m going to get rid of it and any others I find. The last thing I need is a spider bite while trying to organize my new house and look for a job. Doh!
I worked at a restaurant in south mississippi for a few weeks when we first started noticing the brown widows around our B.F.I. cans outside. We really didn’t know what they were but saw the hourglass and figured they weren’t that good for us. So I finally gave in and bought some spray. I killed around 20-30 large widows and almost all the webs had egg sacs. That was about a month ago and ever since i have been seeing more and more all around my house, and the worst part, there’s hundreds of baby ones all over my porch. If anyone knows of a particular spray that gets the jobs done better then the others it would be greatly appreciated.
My two year old daughter was bitten twice by a brown widow spider this morning on the lower leg. She developed a localized area of redness and inflammation, slightly larger than a 50 cent piece in area. We took her to the ER (as well as the spider for identification). They adminstered an oral antibiotic and sent us home after no further symptoms within an hour with a prescription for Cleocin three times daily to prevent any possible infection at the site of the bites. The spider had the classic bright orange hourglass on the abdomen/ brown body and legs. So far there are no more symptoms. It’s only been six hours since the bites occurred, so I will be monitoring her for any more possible effects. Everything I am reading on websites so far indicates that the brown spider is very nonagressive and won’t bite you unless you provoke it… but that definitely was not the case with our daughter. She was sitting at a picnic table coloring a picture when the bites occurred. Anyone else had any incidents where the spider bit them ‘out of nowhere’?
I live in Southern Utah and am very fimiliar with Black widow spiders but I noticed a STRANGE LOOKING spider that had the same body as a black widow but had a brown body almost identical to the pictures seen above. I Found it peeking out from under the lip of the bottom of my stucco on my house, and was taken back to see it during the day instead of at night.I wasn’t even aware that Brown widows existed till I started researching them online. Please let me know if they are migrating here and how to keep them under control.
I was closing the garage door tonight and just barely made out a spider crawling quickly up the door and into the garage. So I opened the door and got out the flashlight and found what turns out to be a brown widow. She only had one egg sack but from the sounds of things I better start looking for more. I’ve seen black widows around my garage before but only on occasion.
The web it made was actually a tightly woven web. it was in a small space about 2 inches wide. I hosed it down with brake clean and then after I determined what it was I squashed it. No second life for this bugger.
Sorry forgot to mention, I’m in Costa Mesa, CA.
My daughter found this brown widow spider in our garage in Conroe, TX
Messy web, spiky egg sac…definitely a brown widow. There are lots of messy webs around my husbands work bench…so I guess we need to go spider hunting.
I live in East Texas and work at a plant farm. There are brown widows everywhere. It took me a while to figure out what they were because nothing I have seen so far has said they are in Texas.Also, I have read different things about how dangerous they are but I know they have been here for at least a year, in doorways, under chairs, in pots, and noone has ever been bit so they really must not be agressive.
We bought our home in middle Georgia two and a half years ago. It had just been built in an area that used to be a forest. The first summer that we lived here we had a major problem in our backyard with black widows, but we chalked it up to the fact that they had been displaced when our subdivision was built. We have found these wierd egg sacs since last summer and we are now finding very few black widows, but our backyard and garage are infested with brown widows. Does anyone know what can we do? We hunt them down and kill them but we just keep finding more and I have two small boys.
I live in Mukilteo, WA, 20 miles from Seattle and about 4 to 5 days ago I got bit several times on my upper leg. 2 or so days later, I woke up to see a dark, small spider with a REAL large and round abdomen crawling close to my face. In the spur of the moment I killed the spider and so I do not have photos of it, but suspected it could be a widow, judging from my memories of it’s shape. All the bites itched but were small, except the lowest one, right next to my knee, which over the course of several days has become slightly swollen (the skin feels slightly raised), red, and itchy (from time to time, although more frequent itching now), but no other symptoms so far. My mom ( A registered nurse) says there’s nothing to do for now but I’m not sure if it’s okay to just leave as is. is there something I should do, instead of waiting for the possibility of it getting worse?
oh, and the area of the swelling is about 507 inches in diameter.
Oh! I took a look at my shoe (to see the spidery remains) and it was indeed brown colored. I’m still not entirely sure it was a brown widow but everything seems to indicate it was. what should I do?
I was just bitten this morning by a brown widow spider, which I had picked up with the morning newspaper outside my office. I didn’t know I had been bitten, until the middle finger on my right hand starting throbbing. About 20 minutes after the throbbing began, I had muscle aches and cramping all the way up my arm and in my armpit. I went to my doctor (taking the spider with me), and he said there was nothing they could give me. The doctor called the National Spider Hotline (didn’t know there was such a thing!), and the woman on the phone told him I would be in pain and have muscle aches and cramping for the next 7 to 12 hours. My doctor gave me a prescription for pain medication, but I just took an 800 milligram Motrin and it has helped enough to make the aching bearable. I’ll try to update more tomorrow, but I am hoping that in 7 to 12 hours, I won’t have any more pain!
brown widow, black, red, pink, whatever…is a widow.
Just look at it’s belly-then youll know you dont want to be bunk mates.
Me working construction, and around the house, widows like dark, cool, and even dampness.
Ive kept spiders as pets, and been tempted by the widow, but then again-NO WAY!
They need to be relocated or destroyed.
No photos (I’m not crazy enough to get near enough with my cell phone camera and that’s the only camera I have), but this site just confirmed that I have a brown widow in my mailbox. I didn’t know what it was till I saw the hourglass spot yesterday, and I didn’t know there was such a thing as a brown widow. Well, sure enough there is. It’s spun a web right at the entrance and has a couple of spiny egg sacs. There are some older spiny egg sacs under the mailbox, so maybe this one hatched from one of those and just stuck around. I’m going to kill it before it bites the mailman.
We’ve had some other spiders on the mailbox, but never a widow spider – just some red or black ones that were small and spindly. This thing has a round body the size of a chickpea and long skinny brown and black stripy legs. Creeeepy!!!
I am a custodian at a school in Tustin, California. I kill, on average, 20 black and brown widows a week. I was confused about a year ago because of the different colors and patterns of widows I saw, and the weird spikey egg sacs I was finding. With a little research, I discovered there was such a thing as brown widows. The last few days I have been hosing down my entire campus (summer vacation-no one there…) and I have washed out and killed probably 50.. It’s a miracle I haven’t been bit…
We have totally become overrun by brown widows! I saw one at the beginning of the spring and noticed the black joints and hour glass on it’s abdomen. It had made a nest in our kitchen window. I had the bug guy spray it and thought that was that. The webs are very interesting though almost like the nylon spiderweb stuff you get at halloween and we had it all over our brick wall and behind the trash bins. Tonight we killed one with the abdomen the size of a really large blueberry.
They dont seem to mind being semi exposed either which really concerns me. We found one nest under the picnic bench where my kids play, they have nests under the skinny brick ledge under our doorframe and in between the screen and windows like i mentioned earlier. One round of spraying from the bug guy killed a few of them but now i see the egg sacs everywhere. Is there anything we can do?
I live in Lakewood, Ca and found this in the back yard.
i live in charleston south carolina…i know all about the black widow and i see them all summer long doing hvac work, but today was first experience with the brown widow. working on my car i notice a widow like spider and not knowing what it was found this site which helped me identify it. it was the size of a half dollar and had 3 egg sacks..i went to the shed to get a jar and noticed another one in a web in the corner..is there any reason that all of a sudden the brown widow would populate my area..i have black widows in my laundry room and brown widows in my shed!
I live in Sarasota Florida and have recently found a few brown widows in our backyard. They like to hide in the kids toys, bikes, slides, and bins full of toys on our lanai. I am really creeped out I don’t even want to let my kids play outside anymore. Will a regular pest control service kill theese disgusting spiders? I am having extreme anxiety over this I know there is more if just in two days, not even searching for these I have found two. I do not even want to go on a spider hunt. What to do???
hey i saw your site and find it great. I live in central florida and just moved into a house that has a screen in back with ingrown pool,the back hasn’t been kept upto date with cleaning so the other day I went out to hose down all the webs and clean up, well I didnt think anything about it because im from up north and all we really have are wolf spiders so I started spraying and then moved a chair when I found a brown widow spider… At first I thought it was a black widow because the first thing I seen was the red glass on its bottom side.
So I went to walmart and got bug srpay and spider spray to kill them. I sprayed everywhere and then today I went to just go around again and spray again, and what do I see, Another brown widow spider with egg sacks, that wasnt there the other day. Is this normal? do they really lay eggs that fast and dont die with bug spray that was just sprayed? ( i know they die when you spray them)
Also I cought one to show my roomie, since he didnt believe me, tryed taking a pic of it but my cam on my phone doesnt really come out clear, but it looks just like Beth’s pics above…
What can I do to get rid of them? I have a 5y.o boy so i dont want him to bit among my own self, since i have bad luck with getting bit…
OMY also I have Brown Recluse Spiders in my back… from count the other day i have almost 8 different spiders in my back…
i had just recently found that widow spider in bike and it was the size of a black widow except it was brown
i have found more brown widows than black widows
my question is how to you get rid of these brown widow spiders completely – we have used an exterminator for the house and I have even sprayed double strength Demon WP all around the exterior of the house, the outbuildings, the fence, etc. but these are still showing up. is there something that you can do to rid your yard completely of these venemous spiders???????????
found 2 brown widows @ front entryway now that im looking i see them, or eggs everywhere! my yard is infested!
I live in Perry GA, a small town in middle Georgia. We moved here from Upstate NY 4 years ago. We purchased the house we live in 2 years ago. They had a very informative article in the Macon Paper about Brown Widows and their “invasion”to middle Georgia. My husband and I started to look around our house and sure enough there THEY were, Mom and her Egg sacks! I feel like we are the only one that has noticed them in our area, everyone acts all sorts of shocked that we say we have them. We are loaded with them it feels like an infestation. I didn’t notice them at our other home but since we moved here and I read the article, I have my eyes peeled! Those evil devils are everywhere and as soon as I torch mom & her babies it seems another mom moves in. The article says you can kill mom with spray but the egg sacks are resistant to all sprays, the only way to rid yourself of 100’s upon 1000’s of babies is to suck them up in a vacuum or set them a blaze. I chose to set them a blaze. I torch mom too. Last Sunday I killed 9 moms and about 30 egg sacks that made their home in the little spaces on my garbage can that we got from the county. So please be aware, especially when you have children and play sets they like to hide in those as well!
I had my local pest control come back out again and have been attacking the spiders with hotshot spider spray. Some of the spiders have died, but my bug guy said spiders are HARD to kill because they dont groom like roaches and dont drag their bodies through the spray like other bugs. He suggested making sure there were no external lights on at night so it doesnt bring bugs to the area, and killing of their food source (i.e. spraying regularly to kill off other bugs) so they’ll go away or die out. Also knock down new and old webbing, this will also help you figure out if you’ve actually killed the spider or not. I’ve been thinking about going after them with a blowtorch too, seems to be the most effective way as Lisa C. mentioned if you can manage not to burn down your house, or flat out smooshing them and the eggsacs. We’ve had blacks and browns co-habitating in some areas of our yard (you can tell by different egg sacs) which really surprised me. I read on Wikkipedia though that mud daubers are the natural predators of widows and i’m thinking about catching a whole bunch to bring home (thus bringing in a whole other problem, but mud daubers aren’t poisonous). This is frustrating, I already had a great fear of spiders… now we’re overrun with poisonous ones.
Just wanted to note that we have what appears to be a variety of Brown Widows here in Huntsville, Alabama – next to Monte Sano. Both garages (one detached) have several spiders, webs and identifying egg sacks…the front porch…the potting shed. EVERYWHERE. Look too similar to the pictures here, but much lighter in color, a bit more tortoise with a marbled effect to some of them. I will take pictures as able.
‘Spent half my life in Southern Florida never seeing a Widow (or a scorpion), but since moving here I can not believe the quantities of spiders…and I LIKE spiders, but enough already! Being critter kindly and with a steady hand, I normally catch creepy crawlies under glass and escort them elsewhere, but now for the first time I condone spraying. Just too many to avoid. Relocate? uhm…not this time.
No longer user-friendly functional storage, it’s become an arachnid habitat.
I live in Savannah Georgia and recently got bit on my right breast while I was sleeping. When I woke up there was a knot and redness all around the bite. It was so bad that I could barely move my right arm. I went to the doctor and she prescribed an antibiotic to help with the symptoms. Since then I have noticed spiders everywhere around my house. I knew I always had wolf spiders but wasn’t aware of the brown widow until today. I killed one in my shed and immediately looked it up on line. I’m pretty sure all the wolf spider babies that i’ve seen were in fact brown widow babies. I find the pointed egg sacs all over my house. Again I just thought they were wolf spider sacs. My main concern obviously is for my health, I have no children but I do have a 95 pound dog. Is there any danger to her or myself, and how do I get rid of them? I have pest control come once a month, but they say there is no way to kill them. Is this true?
I live in San Diego, and I’m somewhat “relieved” to see that I’m not the only one in this area having an all-out war with the widows this year. I had plenty of black widows in the past (including 2 inside), but now the browns are much more common. After finding a mid-size one in a new web in the top of my front doorframe this morning (What a way to start the day!), I was about to go finally yell at my neighbor to clean out all the junk in his yard, but now I guess that won’t do any good, and I won’t blame him. It must be weather-related. We haven’t had much rain here the last couple years, maybe that lets them migrate around everywhere and populate.
No exageration, I have killed about 100 in my yard this summer. I flush them out with regular bug spray, then crush them or let them writhe in agony depending on my mood. They love the under rims of pots, under patio furniture, between trash bins, along curbs, in rows of rocks, and I found a whole community living all along an entire picket fence and chain-link fence. You can tell its a widow web if it seems like haphazard construction and is very strong, that makes a noise when you tear it. Some big ones have their main web close to the ground, but they rest up above following a long thick web strand to their hiding place. The longest I have found was 6 feet up above its web under a window awning. Yikes!!!
I live in Spring Hill, Floirda, which is north of the Tampa Bay area. The clinic I work for recently moved into a new building. We immediately started noticing the spiked egg sacks around the windows and around the bottom of the building. I researched on the internet and there is no question….they are definitely brown widow spiders. They have all the classic characteristics. I’m freaking out and have notified the owners. They promised to come spray but from the other comments I’ve read, I’m not sure they won’t keep coming back. I really don’t like bugs…especially spiders. God bless those of you who want to move them instead of killing them. I just hope they can get rid of them FOREVER! We’re lucky nobody has actually been bit…there are hundreds of them.
I live in Polk County Central FL, My sister brought her Jack Russell to the house because he loves to swim After running around in the pool enclosure and swimming the dog became suddenly ill. Climbed outof the pool and flopped on his side tongue hanging out and having difficulty breathing. The vet said it was an anephalactic reaction. All attempts to revive him on the way to the vet failed. The dog was 1.5 years old and in good health. Upon returning homestarted to look for a possible cause and found several live brown widows and numerous egg sacks on the underneath sides of the middle metal support of my screen room. I have since destroyed all eggsacks and live spiders but unfortunate for “Skippy” it was too late. Didn’t know there was such a spider until I researched what I found.
We found out our garage and porch are both infested with Brown Widows. We live in Tallahassee, FL and found the first one in the garage. After calling the “bug man” to get rid of them (he did confirm they were brown widows and took several back to the office to show off), a very helpful Terminix worker sprayed and treated the porch and entire garage. We had to throw away our wicker porch chairs because they were so infested. I kicked them over and the bottoms of the seats were crawling with spiders and had tons of spiky egg sacks. We were told that they are pretty prevalent in this town but it was the first infestation for my neighborhood. We’ve had to retreat every two weeks since and still can’t completely get rid of them. With a small dog and a small child around, it’s really scary to cohabitate with these little spiders.
To Jonathan, #41, since it’s been almost a month, hope you have found something to get rid of your widows, but if not, I used Spectracide Wasp & Hornet spray (available @ Lowe’s) today in my mailbox and it did the trick! Like many others on site, had not heard of Brown Widows and was not concerned with our mailbox tenants for several weeks, until I saw the almost neon orange hourglass on the female. Also killed a male and egg sac. Good luck!
I will send a photo when I can get one in the next few days. The spider I found looks a lot like the one posted above by Beth (#19), but I don’t see any hourglass of any color on the abdomen, which convinced my daughter it was not a brown widow. I do, however, see some darker shape there (it’s hard to see with my bad vision since the spider is so small) and for the rest, it looks identical to Beth’s picture.
Both my daughter (age 19) and I were bit by what I concluded was a spider. Neither of us saw the spider that bit us, which apparently occurred in our sleep – hers a week before mine. Since we have large wolf spiders in the yard and sometimes found in the house, we thought it was that, but then I found this tiny, mean looking spider in my bedroom about a week after my bite and have determined it is a brown widow. I caught it and put it outside the front door of the house, where it is quite happy.
My daughter described her bite as very itchy and painful. We’re not sure if she had any other symptoms, since she was under a lot of stress at the time and suffered some headaches and whatnot.
My bite was the same. Incredibly itchy for several days, then red and hot. Now (2 weeks later), it is still visible, a dry, scaly patch.
An additional note related to this is that I have trigeminal neuralgia which was triggered very badly by the bite. This condition is generally triggered by a breeze or touch. Mine seems also to be triggered by allergies or toxins. It is a very painful at the nerve site when triggered and I become quite ill as well with flu-like symptoms. (The nerve enters the brain at the temple which is where the pain often occurs, radiating to the other areas affected by the trigeminal nerve (eye, ear, throat, jaw line, sometimes neck).)
The day after I found the bite, I became very ill which lasted for several days.
About a week after the bite, I discovered a host of baby spiders running around on the floor near my glass doors to the (very leafy) back yard. I killed all I found and put diatomaceous earth around the door and floor boards. Diatomaceous earth is actually diatoms — microscopic, pulverized shells that are razor sharp and suck up moisture, so that bugs either are eviscerated or dried up by it. It’s effective even on large bugs (waterbugs) if you use enough of it, and safe for human and animals (no toxins or pesticides), except you should avoid breathing the powder when you put it down (and keep your pets away until it settles). You can poof it with a turkey baster and leave it in cracks, nooks, or any area you think a spider might want to set up house.
We Just had the exterminators spray, and we were infested with approximatly 50-70 adult spiders, we didn’t think much of them when we saw a few, but unfortunately, we lost two beloved australian sugergliders to bites from the spiders so we looked closer and discovered the severity of our problem, Our local exterminator didn’t believe us till we showed him, and even took a specimen back to his office for research, the pesticide he used stated it could take as long as 24 hrs to kill them all, and trust me they are still coming out of hiding to die.
We live in Palm Coast, Florida and in the last two days I have seen two brown widows. One on the outside above the door, with one or two long strands of web to the ground. She had already killed a huge wolf spider and when we opened the door she came out of a crack in the frame. The next day I found one inside, above the opposite door who had a web from the top of the blinds going down to the tile floor. That one came out of hiding when I moved the web.
This morning my 7 year old woke up with a tennis ball size and a ping-pong ball sized swelling that was warm, red, itchy and painful. Called the hospital and they gave me poison control. They told me if it was a certain kind of bite (I guess there are two different kinds) that she would have severe muscle cramps that feel like charlie horses. She also stated that when people are truly bitten they will be in screaming pain and beg to go to the hospital within 90 minutes of the bite.
I don’t want to be an overprotective mother, but when I read about the above and the bites having to be drained and antibiotics and all that, should I be listening to poison control?
I was glad to see that ,Luke, post #69, was writing from San Diego, CA too. I just saw my first Brown Widow yesterday at my grandfather’s house. I thought it was a black widow, since I am very used to them) but I thought it was strange that it was brown, kind of stripped, and the egg sack was spiked. I looked it up online to learn it was a brown. I didn’t even know that existed. We’ve been getting a lot more, and new varieties of bugs and spiders out here in the last few years.
Hi Jim,
My daughter saw this black widow in our garage. I got our can of Raid and sprayed the black widow, it crawled underneath our elyptical machine and on to the wall, I sprayed it again. When I sprayed it the second time, I noticed a brown spider similar in appearance next to it and I sprayed that one too. I waited until they were done moving and put them in a glass jar. After finding your website we took pictures of the underneath. I never knew there were brown widows. Thanks for publishing the information/pics on your site.
Jessica
Huntington Beach, CA
I live in Naples and have recently found numerous brown widow spiders on my back patio around the pool. At first I thought they were black widows until I saw the pictures on line and found there is more than one type. Today I found and killed, with bug spray, five spiders with eggs. What can I use to get rid of these spiders? I have feral cats that stay on the patio so I must be careful of what I put down.
I am in Charleston SC and have found 5-6 of the brown recluses around my patio area underneath chairs, my child’s outside slide, near my doorawy in the upper corner. I saw the orange underbelly of these things and wondered what the heck they were. And now I know. Very good to know. Will be geting sprayed by pest control TOMORROW> It boggles my mind that some people are trapping these spiders…just kill them. They are so dangerous what would provoke you to want to keep a potentailly deadly dpider. JUST KILL IT PEOPLE!
I had never even heard of brown relcuses…good info.
I live in gulfport mississippi on the coast and at work on the outsid eof your windows we have like 8 brown widow spiders first time i saw hem was this week they just kinda showed up but now that i know they are worse the black ones im gonna kill them… thank you…. and it sounds like they are everywhere
i live in southern mississippi a few weeks ago while i was at work i seen a brown widow since then i have seen more and more i killed at least 30 of them and now i have seen the egg sacks at my home what can i do i hate spiders
Hi,
I am attaching a few photos of brown widows I found outside my house in
Los Angeles, CA.
The last three pictures were from a bay brown widow I snapped 2 weeks ago, the first
pictures from an adult I snapped this afternoon. I noticed it was dead
though.
Susanne
I live in Brea, CA and have been battling brown widows for some time now. The spikey egg sac is a clear sign. Banded legs, an hourglass etc. too. I’ve seen various shapes and a lot of different colors and patterns. I am on my third pest control company as the prior two failed their mission to remove them. They seem to reproduce very quickly and I’ve seen them as small as a couple of milimeters and as large as the size of a quarter. I killed 5 last night around my sprinkler timer…which has been up for maybe 5 days. One prior post talks about going out at night with a flashlight to find them.
That is the best way to do it. You have to spray them directly to kill them – I use whatever home depot has. YOu can’t kill them by spraying concrete with any sort of control liquid that says it kills for up to X # of months. We have 3 kids so I’m pretty obsessed with the problem. I’ve also been told, and have read, that their bites are no where near as dangerous as that of a black widow although the poison is more potent. They are apparently not as aggressive and inject less poison when they do bite. I’m not saying I don’t believe that, but I’m ignoring those facts and am constantly on it. You have to check toys and patio furniture all the time.
They like any little hiding spot. Look for webs that are look eratic in their design. They don’t make pretty round webs. We’ve made a conscious decision to keep our yard cleaned up. Any junk you leave laying around, side yards etc, will get infested. Clean your windows properly including the screens as well as the eaves on your home (which is out of character for the black widows I’ve seen). You basically just have to stay on it. I bet anyone in Southern California can find them in their yard at this point if they look. Long post – hopefully helpful.
I live in S. W. Florida and we have brown widows everywhere you look. They are particularly found of the rolled edges on the garbage cans. I have found as many as six on one can. Be careful when taking out the trash.
I live in Tustin, CA and had previously seen a couple of these guys about in our small back porch area but didn’t think much of it. I’ve noticed the webs getting much more numerous lately though so tonight I went outside with a flashlight and killed about 7 large adults that were hanging out on a ping pong table and a couple of lawn chairs. It’s freaky, to say the least, how quickly they multiply and take over a place. It makes me feel better knowing we are not the only ones in Southern California being overrun by these critters though.
I’m in North Fullerton, CA. Noticed odd egg sacks a few months ago; sprayed & squished sacks. Found more sacks and a mama spider on a plant today. Researched the web to discover Brown Widow Spiders! Yikes. Have webs everywhere, but don’t see any sacks or spiders. Am sure they are tucked away or hiding.
I’m frustrated with the different takes on riding our property of these dangerous creatures. Most say spray kills adults but have no effect on egg sacks. Professionals don’t seem to have much luck either. Suggestions range from any Home Depot Sprays to Wasp Killer to Lemon Pledge! Everyone is asking, but no one (or moderators) have an answer. It seems many areas in several states are becoming infested. I ask again … what’s the best way to erradicate these creatures??
Up ’til now my biggest garden problem were grasshoppers & white flies – now we’ve got venomous spiders! egads.
Location : Olde Town Orange, California
Our Yorkshire Terrier Died two years back, Stop eating, Figured she went blind, and just sat/laid for 3 days before we put her to sleep, She was 12 years old. Now we have a new two year old male. Tonight I went spider hunting and killed around 30 brown widows im starting to think my pet was bitten?? Anyways now I havent found any egg sacs but im goign to go look tomarrow. I only see them at night, all spread out in there web waiting. Anyways I use Ortho pest spray, I sprayed everything killed all of them I could see. If you have small pets, children or its just you if you see a spider kill it. I find them under our Outdoor Furnature be carful……………………..
I had been noticing alot of MESSY looking webs under my car port and under the plastic lawn chairs and tables.I was cleaning them off on several occasions but they kept coming back and it seemed to be getting out of control. I had noticed alot of egg sacs in the webs but not really seen any spiders. Yesterday my wife and I decided to spray some bug killer just in case.Within a minute of spraying about 50 if not more of these brown widows with a few black widows were everywhere. Went on the web to identify the spider and the very unusal egg sacs.Lucky no one has been bit.
Dicky G.
Refugio Texas
I live in El Paso, TX. We just found 2 small spiders that look very much like the photos posted on this page. We weren’t quite sure what they were, but now we know to be very careful. Thanks.
I saw this different looking sac from a spider right by the handle of our gate.I told my kids don’ t smash the sac . Then a couple of days later I saw long legs I put my groceries away I set out to look at the mysterious legs and odd shaped sac, that is when I spotted the diamond shape on the abdomen.I freaked and smashed the egg sac and spider. Then I found your web site.I am buying spray tomorrow!!!
Sorry I smashed before I took a picture.I hope to not come across any more but if I do I’ll snap a picture before I smash.(SORRY NATURE LOVERS)
ive seen this spider multiple times over the last year…and my wife and i have noticed several spider bites on them again and again. We have used a spray around all the nooks and dark areas in their rooms and it does seem to have an effect on them but on the outside of our house it is a different story. I kill an average of 8 per week and we live in east central Iowa. I am not sure what else we can do and I worry that one of these times one of our kids will be bitten and something very bad might happen…is there anything else you can recommend to keep this from happening again?
We live in Southern California and I have lived here all of my life. Have always been aware of black widows. Many months ago I started noticing strange looking spiders that looked like black widows but had strange variations of brown and tan with white spots and an orange hourglass on the underside. I thought black widows had mutated until I researched it on the internet. I have de-spidered our patio several times by spraying poison,then wiping out the webs. I have found several egg sacs and killed them as well. These spiders reproduce quickly and are very prolific. Luckily they have not moved into the house. I just hope none of us, we have three sons, get bit. A friend of ours was recently bit and he spent a week in the hospital! By the way they are definitely nocturnal, so if you spray do it at night so they are visible.
I live in Orange County, California. Westminster. We have lived here about 10 years. Every other year, I find a black widow and squish it.
I got bit about 2:30 pm today. I was not even sure that I got bit.
The spider was hiding in our patio chairs. I was out reading on the back patio, and kicked my feet up onto a patio chair. I felt a pinching on my foot. I moved my foot to see what was causing the pinching, and found a brown widow. My foot had been laying on top of it, almost squishing it.
When I removed my foot, it tried to run away. I squished it.
I felt a cramping or charlie horse feeling on my foot directly below the ankle. There was no visible spider bite for the first hour or two.
I felt the crampy feeling moving up to my ankle area. The crampy feeling was weird, but had no flexed muscles, the muscles were flaccid, not tight. About every 15 minutes the sensation moved about 3-6 inches up my leg. When the sensation got to the top of my leg, I complained (a little) to my wife.
I went to the urgent care center, and they sent me directly to a room, and had a nurse come in.
The net result, is that I am a big guy (200 lbs), and it is a little spider. The venom is a neuro toxin, and will create the cramp/charlie horse/pulled muscle feeling.
They gave me an anti-biotic (as spider bites are known to become infected) perscription for 10 days, as well as recommended benadryl every 8 hours.
They also gave me a tetanus shot.
There is not much to be done for the spider bite itself, but continued observation. They are looking for signs of anaphalactic shock… Shortness of breath, sweating, tingling, headaches, etc.
The crampy feeling got as high as the top of my hip, after about 2.5 hours.
About 3 hours after the bite, there is a little red splotch, barely noticible on my foot.
I went outside to take my medicine out to the car, and noticed another brown widow on the front porch. I took pictures and will send them in. The spider was in the middle of the web, just hanging out. With the lights on, it was in plain view on the front porch.
The spider just ran away, up to the handle of the garden hose rack, where the web was anchored. In the handle there is a honey combed area on the back side of the handle. I found two of the prickly egg sacks.
I sprayed the area with wasp spray (what I had on hand at 8pm at night). The spider dropped out of the hose rack and ran around on the porch. I sprayed the egg sacks down. I packed everything into a ziplock bag.
It is 9:45pm – 7 hours later. The crampy feeling that traveled up my leg is gone. The site of the bite is now on fire/burning. There is an area about 1.5 inches radius from the bite that is on fire. The burning feeling is like stepping on a hot coal. When the wind blows on the skin, it seems to fan the burning feeling, almost like an extra-EXTRA strength BenGay ointment.
I am going to knock down all of the spider webs in the yards. I definitely do not want our kids to get bit by one of these venomous spiders. I think that this could really hurt a little kid.
Our next door neighbors have a little girl about 8 years old. The height of my leg, is about the same height as her heart. I would hate to see what would happen if the crampy feeling got to her heart.
I thought I was crazy when I thought I saw a black widow making a nice little home for itself in the inner brackets of a pineapple plant in a pot in front of my office. The leaves near where the stalk will grow started getting closer and closer to one another over the course of a few days, and now seem to be pulled close together as if being stuck together with a glue. I thought I saw something down in the center of the leaves at the very bottom, but I couldn’t make out what I was looking at.
A few days after my discovery of the HUGE spider, I took a flashlight and looked down the center of what I now call “the funnel”. The spider was down at the bottom sitting near two sacs of eggs… They are definitely brown widow sacs, because they have the characteristic points that make it look like a sea mine.
I noticed a very small spider that looks similar in shape to the “big momma”, and I’m assuming its a sexually dysmorphic (sp?) male spider… smaller and less flashy. He seems to stay at the very tip of one of the pineapple leaves… far from “the funnel” and “big momma”…
Over time I’ve noticed weird webs being built and rebuilt. I’m not sure which spider is making the web, but today I noticed “big momma” wrapping up a nice wasp sandwich she had caught near the top of the funnel. I was amazed to see such a LARGE spider about to eat such a LARGE wasp… and so I sat their glued to the gory scene…
I think when she finally noticed me she got annoyed, because she seemed to turn to look towards me and then immediately pulled the wasp sandwich out of the web and brought it down the funnel towards her egg sacks…
I’m curious to know if this brown widow is responsible for BOTH egg sacs, as everything I’ve read seems to indicate one sac at a time…
This spider is bigger than most of the brown widows I’ve seen pictures of or read about… I’d say she’s probably at the heavy weight end of her species…
She’s beautiful, and now that I know she’s so dangerous, I’m happy to leave her be. My boss freaked out about having a venomous spider so close to our office, but I convinced her to live and let live…
I hope I’ll be able to post a picture ASAP… “Big Momma” needs to live on forever on the net… she’s definitely an amazing example of arachnid heritage… definitely gave me a big WOW!
We live in Charleston, SC and my husband does pest control. He sees Brown and Black Widows constantly. He’s seeing the Browns every single day and can now immediately identify its web. They aren’t even indigenous to the US, but came originally from Australia so my husband tells me.
I don’t see them often (thank goodness) but I did actually spot one at my bank today. Also please watch out for them at restaurants as well. They love making their webs under the chair that patrons sit on. Fortunately the Brown Widow is not nearly as aggressive as its cousin the Black Widow. Otherwise I think from the population of them, we’d be hearing about countless bites from them.
Where are these spiders coming from and why are they all over the place? they
produce so fast and so many. They have only been spotted outside and there have
been over ten eggs; the web is super strong to take down.
YOU HAVE TO KILL THEM right away because if you don’t pretty much you might as well let them take over your house.
Couple days ago my boyfriend and I spotted the mother and her babies scattered along the driveway and then tonight we killed about 15 eggs and the mother.
What is the best way to get rid of these things?
(Orange County)-CA
can brown and black wilow spiders be found
in pender NE?
There has been two brown widows on are porch. The first one i saw, i caught it in a jar. I took it to my school and my science teacher told me what it was. She idmeditly killed it. the second one i saw today. It also has and egg sac. Also, I heard that they are twice as venomes as a black widow. Also it is the first time i have heard of one i south carolina.
covina, california
we just recently discovered all our black widows went brown. does one species kill and take over the others? where we used to see one or two black widows we now see four or five brown widows. i believe one of us will be bit soon because of their numbers.