I store my riding gear in the garage. This includes my helmets, jackets and boots. Ever since the stink bug incident (don't ask) I've always been careful about giving whatever I'm going to wear a good shaking out and inspection before donning it. Thursday was absolutely beautiful here in tropical South Jersey. Sixty degrees and sunny. Not bad for mid-December in these parts. I chucked all that was on my to-do list and decided to ride. I pulled my helmet off the shelf, gave it a few good whacks, and the little bitch pictured below fell out onto the garage floor. No perspective in the photo, but she was (past tense - she's no longer with us) about the size of a raisin. Don't let her size fool you. They pack a punch! I have a friend who was bitten by a black widow. He had a terrible time of it. After the initial bite, which he described as like a strong electric shock, he developed a severe headache and was nauseated for two days. The bite itself festered and the area around it became necrotic and grew to a patch about the size of a half-dollar. It took months to heal and left a scar on his bicep. The critter was in the arm of a jacket he had left hung on his porch. If you store your gear outside the house, keep the above in mind.
Yikes! So glad you gave your helmet those whacks! A black widow--thats scary. Sorry to hear about your friend. What a freak thing. I hope he's ok now. Around here we have to be on the lookout for scorpions and rattlesnakes. Good to read you're getting some nice weather. Stay safe!
That's not good - our weather may be rubbish in the UK, but I suppose that at least far less of our wildlife is out to get us . My curiosity is now very much sparked about the stink bug incident too......
Insy wincy spider crawled up the spout Saw a motorbike And fancied a day out Climbed into a helmet To go for a ride @Fork Lock came a-knocking And Insy Wincy died!
Awesome rhyme!! Stink bugs - members of the family of Pentatomidae, although they probably don't get invited to a lot of insect family gatherings. You kinda' feel sorry for the little bastids. Tough to be saddled with that moniker. All the other bugs likely laugh at them and tell cruel jokes. They are about the size of your pinky fingernail. They seem to come in waves. Every few years they swarm, or maybe there's a stink bug orgy and they just reproduce en masse. One summer a while ago they were really thick - everywhere. They aren't particularly stinky - until you crush one. They have a strong, really repugnant, sort of chemical odor when mashed. I pulled my heavy, lined leather jacket off the hook in the garage and the little feckers were all over the liner inside. There were hundreds! Took the jacket outside, removed the liner and trashed it. If you're interested there's a bloke selling a nice one on EBAY. WTF? Bug collectors would be interested, I guess. If I had known they were worth that much I'd have sold them. I probably could have retired early.
We have something very similar over here in the UK but they have no value whatsoever. They are called Extinction Rebellion Twats. They gather in towns and cities and block roads and annoy people who have to work for a living rather than scrounge off the state.
Yes. While they are quite right to be concerned about climate change, their tactics are woefully misguided: guaranteed to piss people off and forfeit any public support that they might otherwise have had.
Best not to try - a lady was merely considering using her Range Rover to crush one and is now facing prosecution. https://www.theguardian.com/environ...r-pushing-insulate-britain-activist-at-sit-in
Likely they stink all the time. My eldest was dating a fellow a while back. As she was seeing him only on weekends, he seemed quite fresh. She saw him on a Thursday evening not long after meeting him. He had a certain air about him. He explained that showering daily was ecologically irresponsible and a waste of water. He only showered once a week, on Friday after work (at least he had a job). Goodbye fella.
No Black Widow but it caused me a bit of consternation. Just pulled out into a line of traffic when something caught my eye at the top of my visor. Trying to watch the traffic and see what it was exactly was a bit difficult so just wiped across my visor with my hand but that failed to move the item. Traffic pulled up and managed to focus and saw it was a spider, and realised that it was inside the visor, just didn’t want it in my eyes or mouth so pulled into the verge, whipped my helmet off and tried to tip it out only to find that it had managed to get between the visor and the pin lock somehow. Had to remove the pin lock to get it out and return it to the wild
I DO like spiders. Outside, I'm happy to have them around. I love the big orb web spiders that put up the giant webs under the eaves of my house in late summer. They're beautiful - in their own way. The little black jumping spiders in the garden are cool. They have excellent eyesight, as they are ambush hunters. If you push your finger toward them they rear up on their back legs like "You want a piece of this?" If I find a big wolf spider in the garage, I shoo her out the door. Not the widow, though. I know they only bite if provoked, but they are just too fecking dangerous.
All this talk of spiders reminded me of a photo I took some years ago out by our trash bins. I had no idea when I took it though I'd have guessed six years ago or so. A quick search for "Spider" in Photos on my Mac turned this little guy up. And it was not six years ago, but twelve! Once again that bears out what Mr. Sandi and I always say--when we think something is X number of years ago, just double it and we'll be much closer to accurate. I've no idea what type of spider this is. Does anyone know??
Looks like a Western Spotted Orb Weaver, though the abdomen on yours is less rounded. https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/identifying-common-orbweavers-from-the-underside-wiki/275
Thinking about it after your encounter, I think if I lived in a country with so many dangerous critters that like to hide in dark places, I'd pack all my kit in clear vacuum bags..... Here in the UK, in winter, I put some of my most persistent house spiders into the garage as they can't live outside in winter. My garage looks like those old horror movies at times. But I don't store any riding kit out there.... One of my encounters...
Yeah Wattie...that's one of the jumping spiders. Like I said, they're cool. They have an attitude. One of the coolest is the Portia Spider (Google them). They are intelligent! They eat other spiders and have have incredible problem-solving skills. And, I do keep all the gloves (riding gloves, garden gloves and baseball mitts) in the garage in zip lock bags. Spiders seem to like gloves. Spider real estate agents probably tout them as five-bedroom houses. I also wrap the ends of my propane connections in plastic wrap when in long term storage due to the little buggers getting in and clogging the nozzles. A few years ago one of the car manufacturers, I forget which, had to retrofit tiny screens on their engines due to a certain type of spider making their homes in the engine's air system's ventura tubes causing breakdowns. Twice, over the years, after bringing live Christmas trees in, we came out the next morning to find the tree looking like it was flocked due to hundreds of baby spiders hatching once inside the warm house and trailing their webs all over the tree. Christmas smelled like Raid insect spray instead of pine scent. I have a buddy who is has a terrible case arachnophobia. Heading down the shore with him driving his '68 Mustang, a tiny spider came down its web, hanging right in front of his face. At 50 mph, in the passing lane of Rt. 30, he climbed into the back seat! I had to steer and brake over the transmission hump from the passenger side to get us over to the shoulder!
I spent some time researching spiders years ago and they're actually relatively intelligent. They do use body gestures for rudimentary communication, mostly various motions of certain legs. Whenever I come across a spider, and almost all insects, I just scoop them up into a jar and chuck them outside into the bushes. We get more spiders than bugs, Southern House Spiders and various Jumpers for the most part, but Recluses and Widows are a possibility. Never seen one of those inside, though. Definitely get more incursions in the colder months. We've had a few set up shop in the house plants now and again and at that point I'll let them winter over. Once spring hits and they're still alive, it's into the bushes they go.