crawly creepy

Last weekend, when I was sorting out the lower vegetable bed, I came across a large, spotted brown spider in the tomatoes.  Feeling a bit more courageous than I might have without my thick garden gloves on, I decided to cut the branch she was on and move her to a new home among the eggplants.

 After moving her to the bed above, I noticed a couple things:

1) three white, spikey egg sacks that had been hidden behind the leaves I'd cut away on the tomato plant.

2) when the spider crawled to the top of the eggplant leaf, I spied a neon orange hour glass on the underside of her belly.

It was pretty easy to identify.  I typed "brown widow" into Google and found a bunch of  info.  If I'd had any doubt, the egg sacks sealed the deal of our spider being a Latrodectus geometricus - commonly known as the brown widow, a close cousin to the black widow.  After reading last weeks post on Ramshackle Solid about black widows, I felt a certain camaraderie in knowing that it wasn't just us - other people are sharing their yards and homes with these scary creatures too. But now we have kin whose poison is supposedly twice as toxic? 

I'm beginning to rethink our "catch and release" policy.