The Itsy Bitsy Spider...

...climbed up the water spout. Literally. It did. And it's been climbing up the same water spout for at least a month now. I have a water spout outside the carport that has had a nice thick web, perfect for keeping the ugly buggies away, under and around it for around a month or two. I'd never actually seen the spider that resides there but Didn't really give it too much thought. Last night Josh and I were outside trying to fix our AC. (I didn't help. I just turned the hose on for Josh to clean it out.) When I reached down to turn the faucet on, I saw a quarter-sized spider right by my hand. In the glow of the outdoor floodlight, I saw how incredibly pitch-black and down-right creepy this thing was. When the water turned on, the leaky drip caused the spider to turn tail and run back to the other side of it's web. As it turned upside down I caught a faint glimmer of something bright red. And as you should all know, bright red is not normally a good color in the animal kingdom. And in spider kingdom? Even worse. I jumped back and began an hour-long eebie-jeebie dance upon realization of what I had just found. The one...the only...the deadly Black Widow spider. At first I was hesitant to believe that I saw what I thought I saw. Trick of the mind perhaps? So I searched for it to no avail. The dripping water was keeping it at bay. We turned the light and water off and waited half an hour. I went back out there, flipped the light on and it was back. In all it's terrifying hideousness...there it was. No doubt about it. That red hour glass shape was staring right back at me and I commenced with my eebie-jeebie dance. It's web was so thick that I couldn't get my foot anywhere near it to smash it without alerting it. So I called my folks. Mom said she'd bring over a can of wasp/scorpion killer spray. Shoots twenty feet. My kind of weapon. My dad, hearing about this, was super giddy at the prospect of seeing a live black widow and came over too. That's my dad for ya though. It took three hits from the spray to kill that nasty thing. After the first two hits it slowly tried to climb back out. I did feel a tiny bit of guilt as I believe she was keeping my ant problem at bay. But I'd take ants over deadly black widows in a heart beat. Needless to say, I've called an exterminator and he'll be out to check and spray tomorrow afternoon. I took the lid off the butter container I'm keeping it in until he gets here so that I could take a picture to prove I'm not weaving a tall tale. I took the lid off, took the picture, put the lid back on and then did another eebie-jeebie dance. The Mid-west and black widows. huh. Who knew?