I met one of our close neighbors a few days ago, a nice, lovely widow.

I first noticed her a couple of weeks ago when I was changing a hose at our outside faucet. The connected hose almost always has some pressure, so water drips out when I unscrew the fitting. The drops hit her web, and she comes out to investigate. I’m not quite sure how I managed to get my phone to shoot the video upside down. I guess it couldn’t tell which was was up when I held it pointed down.

Here’s a still shot.

This spider has the characteristic red hourglass shape on the abdomen, which she graciously presented, but it also has a red dot towards the rear of the abdomen. There is no mistaking a black widow spider, with its shiny, black body, even if the red marking is not visible.

I seldom bother black widows, or any other spider, for that matter. If I can, I remove the harmless (or, based on some reading I just did, usually harmless) spiders from the house and release them outside. I have never found a black widow inside. I might or might not try to capture it with a plastic container, depending on how brave I felt and how aggressive the spider was. I have also never found a brown recluse spider, for which I am thankful. They are apparently more likely to be found in a house than a black widow.

The link above says that the wolf spider bite “may be very painful.” I see wolf spiders very frequently at night when I take the dogs out. The orb-weaving spider, which I believe lives around here, spins webs that are easy to walk into, especially at night. The web site says, “Be careful not to walk into their webs at night – the fright of this spider crawling over one’s face can be terrifying and may cause a heart attack, particularly to the susceptible over 40 year olds.”

I guess I will continue to appreciate spiders, but only from an appropriate distance.