I often see Black Widow webs at homes that I show. They are generally pretty obvious. They simply are thicker and bigger than most other spider webs. You often see them around the outside of the home by the garage, front door, and other open areas.
Black Widow season, in my opinion, usually begins around May and goes until about November. Though these are particularly venomous creatures, the good news is that they tend to hide away during daytime and try to avoid contact as much as possible. However, that’s hardly a comfort given how awful looking they are and where they sometimes choose to locate their web and home.
Black Widow Haven at a Chandler Home
This past weekend, I came across this find at a vacant home in the Redwood Estates community in Chandler. This is about the worst example of Black Widows proliferating at a home I have seen.
As you can see in the video, there are more than 5 egg sacks here (at 250-700 spiders per sac, that is as many as 1,250 to 3,500 spiders being produced!). As well, there were webs in different areas of the garage with even a male black widow virtually out in the open. Webs extended for numerous feet and there is no doubt in my mind that if I saw the garage at nighttime, I would find a disturbing collection of Black Widows I had ever seen.
To some degree, this home is a hazard. Clearly, no one is spraying the property to rid it of these pests. The size of the webs indicate that the spiders are largely undisturbed and free to reproduce.
How Do You Kill Black Widows?
Of course, this is where a pest control company comes in to spray so that many of the Black Widows around your home potentially die on their own. However, I also recommend walking the perimeter of your home looking for large webs. If you see one, come back out after dark with a flashlight and a spray pesticide (I use a thick Wasp foam that allows me to spray a stream of suffocating foam from a distance of several feet – I don’t like to get near the Black Widow as they can be fast when under threat).
Just Because the Home is Vacant Doesn’t Mean There Aren’t Responsibiities
For every vacant home, there is an owner. Whether this be an individual, a family, an investor, or a bank, the home does indeed have an owner on the title. As such, it must be the responsibility of this person or entity to take due care to ensure that the home is not creating a potential hazardous situation for residents who live nearby.
As such, this home does present a hazard. It wouldn’t take a lot of effort to clean this ‘mess’ up. Neighbors next door probably don’t realize the real extent of black widows that are being allowed to multiply here. If they did, I imagine some of them would try to take action.
Though the homeowner is doing right in this case to ensure that the pool is functioning properly and not subject to the wear and tear of the sun when empty, the homeowner also needs to realize that there is another hazard that has been allowed to develop on the property.
This represents one of those more neglected aspects of the downturn in our local Phoenix real estate market.
Email this Post
