good news?

Well, I have discovered that it wasn't a *black* widow that I had in that trash can last year. No, it was a brown widow. I discovered this because I have another one that I found as I was taking apart this old bird bath I had hanging around (I wanted to re-use the top for something else). Ugh. It still gives me the shivers. I didn't see her at first as she was balled up under the rim (although I was suspicious because the egg sacs looked so similar to the last time) so I blithely carried the bird bath out to the curb.

brown widow - eggs & markings

Realized later in the day that there definitely was a spider there - quite a large one, in fact. But still not too concerned b/c I could plainly see that is was brown and not black and that it had stripes on it's legs. Took a look at her with the headlights then when I got home just now. She had come out from being under the rim and was stretched out right in the middle of her web. I could see quite clearly that she had an orange/red marking on her abdomen and had that weird body shape that black widows have. Still, I thought, the striped legs, the brown body - surely it's an angiope.

angiope

Came inside to look up angiopes online. Definitely not the same spider. Then I thought to look up brown widows which I remembered hearing about earlier this year. Sure enough, brown widows also have striped legs and their color ranges from a light brown to an almost black - although they can get very dark markings and can sometimes be mistaken for a black widow. But the way you can tell them apart is that the brown widow has a spiky egg sac (see picture above). So that must have been a brown widow before b/c that was exactly what those eggs looked like then.

Apparently they are very prevalent in this area (http://sarasota.extension.ufl.edu/IPM/BrownWidow.htm) and their venom is twice as potent as the black widow. Isn't that nice? Luckily they are much less aggressive than the black widow and more likely to choose "flight" over "fight" which is probably why I haven't had a problem with them...other than scaring me 1/2 to death.

Not sure what to do about it now though. Should I kill it? I feel like I should so that the trash guy doesn't get hurt but now I'm nervous to go near it. (Which seems silly considering I carried it from the back yard to the front earlier AND was practically handling it when I was taking it apart.) I am never going to be able to get to sleep tonight - especially without being able to read!

UPDATE (3/23):
Well, I have killed it. Felt horrible because the spray (which I found in the garage from the previous owners) didn't work very quickly so I had to watch prolonged death throes, feeling more and more guilty all the while.

Here's a picture of her before her untimely death (most of her is still hidden under the edge):