Posted on 10/04/2010 1:12:42 PM PDT by lowbridge
Students in a San Diego elementary school are getting a lesson in arachnophobia.
Dozens of venomous black widow spiders have been found infesting classrooms in Pete W. Ross Elementary School, San Diego's KGTV reported.
"The spiders... are coming out now from the bookshelves and the doorways and even up in the rafters," April Robertson, a third grade teacher at the school, told the station.
I’ve killed three in the last two years at my house. Still I’d rather have these than brown recluse.
Call Billy the Exterminator. He would fix this school up real good. Whats with CA, they can’t handle spiders?
We’ve had more around our house this year, here in Virginia. My girlfriend found one the other day, on the porch, that was freakin’ huge.
We have ‘em around our house too. If you pick up a pot or toy on the patio, you have to first bang it on the ground so they will hopefully run out.
What’s up with all the spider stories....yesterday it was brown reluses in New York....now this.
I saw my first and only black widow about 2 years ago. I’ve always wondered how dangerous they are. I would agree about the brown recluse thing. Those guys are something serious.
Okay, now I am all freaked out
In the Imperial Valley our recent earthquakes must have opened up channels and chasms(my theory) because the whole valley seems to be complaining of unusual ant,bug and spider activity.
Both the black widow and brown recluse are capable of killing you. The black widows are more dangerous for young and old people.
The brown recluse only injects poison about 50% of the time. When they do there is a fair chance of a significant injury. The poison breaks down your flesh so people end up with great big gaping wounds as the flesh dies.
I learned this after being bit by one on a hunting trip. Fortunately I only had the bulls eye bite and an extremely sore arm. Just the fangs are enough to do that.
Now go rent ARACHNOPHOBIA!.... 
This is California... Black Widows are all over the place if you go looking for them. I could literally catch a dozen every night if I wanted to by simply taking a flashlight and walking our back yard fence after it gets dark. They tend to be at the base of the fence, about 6-12 inches above the ground and 6-12 inches from the fence. Usually they’ll be spaced at least 8 feet apart, the specific distance of that likely to have at least something to do with the fact that the fence is built with 8 foot wide sections between posts.
Usually it's the cockroaches that enter a long-vacant apartment, then spread to infest the whole neighborhood. Black Widows thrive wherever there are lots of flies, so that could be the source.
Their poison is a neurotoxin and ounce for ounce more lethal than a cobra. The reason more bite victims do not die is tha fact that the spider is relatively small and does not inject a large dose.
Very distinctive egg cases, probably the easiest (and safest) way to detect an infestation.
Can they be trained to eat bedbugs?
Do environmental regulations prevent them from using effective insecticides? (And poisoning spiders, too?)
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