Black Widows (Crawlspaces)

Black widow spiders adore a crawlspace.  One of my worst experiences as an electrician involved a crawlspace infested with full-grown black widows.  As I entered the space, I saw their signature (messy) webs festooned everywhere under the floor joists.  I counted nearly a dozen spiders as I scuttled across the bare earth below the floor.  I held a cord-attached trouble light before me as I dragged myself across the space, clearing webs.  Halfway into the space…tink…my incandescent lightbulb instantly burned out.

I froze there in the darkness.  Black widows all around.

Fortunately, my coworker was on the floor above me.  “Rodney!” I bellowed.  “I’m in trouble here!  My light burned out and I can’t move.  I’m surrounded by black widows.”

Rodney soon appeared in the wan light at the crawl opening from which I originated.  “I need a new light bulb,” I told him.  “I can’t move without one.”

Rodney, using electrician’s tape, strapped a new bulb to the extension cord.  I pulled the cord and bulb to me and replaced the bulb in my light.

We finished our work (me dodging black widows for the better part of a half-hour) and then drove back to the shop.  I immediately found my boss and told him he was welcome to fire me because I would never enter that crawlspace again.

My boss laughed.  “You don’t have to go there again.”

My work as an electrician taught me to wire-in a series of lights throughout the crawlspace below the floor of my house when I constructed it.  I have entered the space many dozens of times for one reason or another and have thanked myself for the light.

I entered my crawlspace for a plumbing gig just the other day.   As soon as I entered the space, I switched on the lights.  The instant I peered down into the wash of light where I intended to go, I saw an enormous black widow suspended in the air below my floor joists.  Above the spider, I saw the gnarly web she constructed under a heat register near my back door.

As a rule, my policy is live and let live.

I took an exception there in my own well-lighted crawlspace.

—Mitchell Hegman