Dark lady

So, the other day I noticed this was living two feet from my front door, and very close to where Mojito hangs out on my little porch area:

I am an extreme arachnophobe, as it happens. (By the way, that white thing is some extra-long twisty-tie thingies. They fell into her web when I was staking tomato plants in my containers, and I declined to attempt to retrieve them.)

I started thinking it looked a lot like a female black widow (Latrodectus hesperus). I'd had one in my art studio in my former house. (That was not a good day.)

I put the camera on zoom and got as close as I dared, took a pic, then went to my computer to see what I could see.

When I purposely overexposed the photo (below), the red hourglass abdominal markings became very obvious. 

Ugh!! 

I kept Moji off the porch and tried for a couple of days to find someone who might catch and relocate her. I detest spiders, but I don't think any part of nature should be killed unnecessarily. (Well...maybe mosquitoes.)

No takers. (Perhaps no surprise there.) So I got a dog-park-neighbor-guy to come kill it for me. Ironically, it turns out his profession is pest control, and he's seen plenty of black widows. But when he saw mine, he stopped in his tracks and said, "Whoa...that is big."

So now that she has shuffled off this mortal coil and become an ex-menace, I can brag about how I had the biggest, most badass black widow around.

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Now we are desperately in need of some fuzzy cuteness, aren't we?

This is the puppy a friend adopted recently. His name is Hoshi:

Legs-up napping.

Rumi's not stuck, in need of help--he was just nonchalantly hanging out like that all afternoon.

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com