Eight-legged and scary
posted by Paul
In an attempt to find an easy way to clean a few plastic garden chairs, I dumped six of them into our swimming pool. I returned an hour or so later and fished them out of the pool, only to find this little monster stuck in its own web at the bottom of one of the chairs. This Button Spider (known as the Widow Spider in other parts of the world) appeared to have drowned in the swimming pool. After shooting copious photos, however, I noticed a twitch from one of its eight legs followed by a slow rising and lowering of the abdomen.
I learned two things from this exercise:
1. Never try to drown a spider
2. Garden chairs don't miraculously get clean in the pool
4 Comments:
This was a most interesting post. Is that spider what we call a "Black Widow?" If it is, then our variety is supposed to be deadly. I don't think I ever saw one in the water unless it was an accident.
@abraham lincoln: Hi, I think the Black Widow is a close relative of this one. We do have them in Cape Town, though I think that this is the common garden Button Spider (Widow species) and don't think that it's deadly to humans... well not adults at least. I believe that it could be deadly to small cats and dogs though... but that's only if it manages to get through all that fur. ;)
Well I'm not scared of spiders but this is the first that I knew that you had 'a sort of nasty' spider that could be found in gardens etc of Cape Town...I will check garden chairs that I sit on in future!!
Lol @ that last line. :-)
I doubt we have any dangerous spiders here in jamaica, but I still do not like spiders.
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