For the first nine years of my life, I lived in Pasadena, California. There were black widows around, and every once in a while you'd read in the paper about some local child who'd died of a black widow bite. A next door neighbor's dog that I used to play with a lot got killed by a black widow bite (according to the vet—he'd seen a lot of pets killed that way).

We were warned never to stick our hands anyplace we couldn't see into. And any time a black widow was spotted in the house, it called for an all-out search-and-destroy mission. We kids were all issued fly-swatters and told, "If you see it, hit it as hard as you can!" I flattened the hell out of a few of them. WHOP!!! WHOP!!! WHOP!!! Then WHOP!!! It again!!

Most of the spiders we have around where we live now are benign, common garden spiders, but I still don't want 'em in the house.

Don Firth