One day when I reached into the mailbox to get the mail, I felt tiny legs tickling the back of my hand and sticky spider webs on my fingers. Clutching the mail, I jerked my hand back and looked into the mailbox to see what kind of spider I had touched.

The spider had the overall shape of a Black Widow Spider (Latrodectus spp.) and it's messy, random sort of web, but it was striped, instead of black.

As the spider moved around in it's web, I saw the characteristic red, hourglass shape on the underside of it's abdomen that identified it as a venomous, female Black Widow Spider. This spider was not yet fully mature, so she still had some of her juvenile striping.

Unfortunately, I was too busy to go buy some bug spray and deal with the spider that day, and the mail had already come by the time I got home the next afternoon. When I opened the mailbox, the Black Widow Spider was frightened and hid inside the pile of mail. I used a narrow shovel to drag the mail out of the mailbox and then scooped it up in the shovel and carried it out to the back porch where it sat for a couple of days to give the spider time to leave. Even then, because of my arachnophobia, I was still too afraid to touch the mail, so I had someone braver than I make sure the spider was gone.