Didnt realize the photo quality is shit until now, sorry bout that.
Used to see black widows everywhere here. Never do, any more. These gals n guys have moved in instead it seems.
This one doesnt seem particularly bright as far as spiders go, it was starting to wrap up the leaf that got blown into its web.
They’re aggressive AF, and they’re everywhere here. Black widows seem to be sorta hermits. They will hide if you pay too much attention, but not the brown ones, they dont seem to shy away from shit. I find their spiky egg casings everywhere - lawnmower shed, garage corners, toolboxes used infrequently. Found one in my car a couple months ago (that was fucking fun - i went apeshit looking for the mama that put it there. A month of waiting to be bitten by an unruly spider.)
Brown recluses scare me, mostly because I'm not sure I could recognize one. I know they're "fiddle-backs", I've looked at photos on the internet, but I still have no confidence I would correctly identify one if I saw it. And I'm not super scared of spiders, I tend to just let them continue on with their day, so I'm worried I'll see a brown recluse, be like "neat spider", forget about it, then get bitten because I didn't know it was brown recluse!
Black widows don't scare me because I know exactly what they look like and where they like to hang out, so they're easy to avoid.
I've got that same problem. I live in a brown recluse heavy area and I'm certain I've seen them before, but I've never knowingly seen one, you know what I mean? I've definitely looked at a brown recluse and been like "oh, a wolf spider" and carried on with my day lol
black widows are my favorite, though. very docile, pretty much only make their webs out of the way, very predictable where that's going to be, big enough to be noticeable, very distinct appearance, and also they're probably the prettiest kind of spider ive ever seen in person