{"id":197,"date":"2005-08-16T12:28:00","date_gmt":"2005-08-16T19:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/fire\/2005\/08\/16\/black-widow-spider-in-the-mailbox\/"},"modified":"2008-05-12T17:50:58","modified_gmt":"2008-05-13T00:50:58","slug":"black-widow-spider-in-the-mailbox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/2005\/08\/16\/black-widow-spider-in-the-mailbox\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Widow Spider in the Mailbox"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

\"Immature<\/p>\n

The spider had the overall shape of a Black Widow Spider (Latrodectus<\/em> spp.)<\/a> and it’s messy, random sort of web, but it was striped, instead of black.<\/p>\n

\"Immature<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Immature<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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… Read More → <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arizona-invertebrates","category-arizona-spiders-and-arachnids"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}