Death of a Black Widow

A symphony of birds this morning on my run. Nothing sounds more beautiful than Canadian birds on a spring morning.
As usual, an infestation of black widows in my garage this spring. I found a huge one on the garage ceiling and brought it down to flip it. Sure enough a big red hour glass. As I ran inside to get a jar to collect her, Peter killed her with my badminton racket. i was so mad because I was going to relocate her or keep her as a specimen. She was huge! Her daughter still reside in a web on our garage window–her marking are yellowish still as she is young. They can live up to 5 years and if they like a place, stay their entire life. But, their venom is 15x that of a rattlesnake and more deadly than that of a cobra or coral snake–so as their bite may not kill me and PJ, it could easily kill a child. I will relocate the young one. It seems our garage is a favourite winter hang out for them. So I am sure it will be impossible to relocate them all. I am a huge fan of spiders, I find them beautiful and fascinating, I just don’t want my babies to get bitten!