I used to see a black widow here and there in eastern washington. I thought they were a desert spider.
Nope. I’m in very wooded and damp Kentucky now and I can just throw a blanket over our bench by our fire pit and come back in a couple of weeks and there will be two or three of them setting up camp under the blanket. I even saw one with a weird row of red dots instead of the hourglass. Turns out it was the equivalent of a “teenager”.
Interestingly, they are actually very pretty.
My mother-in-law’s grave has one of those built-in flower vases that can be recessed into the ground. The hole where the vase goes is home to a Black Widow family.
Very appropriate.