Black Widow Hunting - Beatrice the Biologist

I am not as frightened of spiders as the average person. I definitely don’t want them on me, but I really don’t mind if one is around. They’re just part of life; part of nature. I’m cool with them. Here is some proof:

I got a hand-me-down TV stand from someone who wasn’t big on cleaning things, but I moved it into my room secure in the fact that it didn’t harbor any arachnid stowaways.

Months later, I dropped something on the floor near it, and when I bent down to pick it up, I looked into one of the cupboards more closely than ever before and noticed a bright orange spider sitting on its web in the upper corner of the unit.

I froze and considered this situation. I stared at the spider, sizing him up, deciding where this sat on the danger scale. Again, I’d had this piece of furniture in my room for months, and I’d never seen this spider or gotten a bite, so I could only assume he’d been content to stay on his web and feast on the surely copious insects I had in my dingy apartment.

As if the spider understood English, I spoke to him and said, “Okay, clearly you’ve been here a while. I’m going to pretend I didn’t see you. You keep eating bugs, and we’ll leave each other alone. Cool.”

So with this context, consider the following story:

I had dinner with my aunt, cousin, and sister. Good times all around.

When we headed back to the car, cousin and sister got in first. I was about to open the door and place my buttocks in the car as well, but just then, my cousin turned to me from inside the car, and through her muted screams I heard her say, “Don’t get in the car!”

I looked at her inquisitively.

She threw open her door and ran to me.

I opened my door to look underneath the driver’s seat–where cousin had last seen it–for said black widow and saw no such thing, but I did notice that there was a rather elaborate and ominous web in the foot area of the back seat… where my feet had been on the way to the restaurant.

I started moving various car floor items out of the way looking for the spider, while all of us experienced things like this:

I borrowed my aunt’s plastic drinking cup to poke around under the seat, planning to trap the spider when I found it.

About 10 minutes later, I had moved into the car and was still searching for our visitor. I was focusing so intently on the floor area where Danielle had seen it, that I didn’t notice the spider was right in front of me on the back of the seat.

I know I said that I’m not terribly afraid of spiders. But this spider was beefy and enormous, and I didn’t want to get my hand anywhere near it for spider-murdering or spider-retreival missions. But we couldn’t all get back in the car until it was dealt with, so…

“I’ll try to get it in the cup!”

“Almost!”

“It went into the fold of the seat!”

My aunt shoved a folder into the butt of the driver’s seat to force the spider back out.

“I almost have it!”

All the screaming and spidery jibblies were making my hands start to shake. Why couldn’t this stupid spider just get in the cup?!

I walked a few steps away from the car and tossed the cup away. I froze for a moment and realized that the spider may have somehow ejected from the cup while I was mid-throw and might be on my body at this very moment. To rule this out, I approached the just-thrown cup and verified that the spider was indeed inside it. She was perfectly fine despite her short flight in the cup, but I bet she was confused, not that I could really tell.