I found this brown widow spider egg sac under the rim of a flower pot on a neighbors porch. My neighbor was limping, and I asked him what happened; he showed me a nasty spider bite on his foot, and said he never found the spider. Well, if you've browsed my site at all, you probably noticed that I'm curious - so off I ran to search the area where he got the bite. Bingo! I found both the egg sac, and the mama spider. He was extremely happy when I offered to take them to my house.

Now, I generally keep my critters alive, but after seeing the bite, I opted for a quick rubbing alcohol bath for the spider before I got too close a look at it.  Sorry if that sounds cruel; I have limits...

My curiosity also led me to gently pull open the egg sac to see what was inside. LOTS of perfectly round little spider eggs rolled all over the place:

The pictures of the spider didn't turn out very good, so I used a magnifying glass to get better photos. That was quite a few cameras ago...

I took pictures of the spider bite; don't look if stuff like that bothers you.

I got a few close up photos of the spider, then didn't see another brown widow for years.  When I found the next one - darned if it didn't have an egg sac too!  Instead of killing it, I stuck it in a jar and dropped a few bugs inside with it so it had snacks.  Look at what I ended up with!

What do you do with a jar full of spiders that bite?

Well, that decision aside - here are a few photos of the first brown widow I found.  I never got brave enough to take the lid off of this jar for better pictures of this one.  Perhaps spider encounter three will make this page more interesting; check back to see what else I stumble across as time passes.