Fighting a spider invasion

SUMMERVILLE— It's enough to give you the creeps — venomous brown widow spiders. Maryann Ferrara's house is crawling with them.

Webs and egg sacks dangle from the engine and undercarriage of her son's Camaro. One bulby female arches her legs threateningly when an onlooker gets too close, then scurries up the air intake. The spiders drop from the eaves of her porch, crawl on the rocker seat, the flower plants, the wind chime, even the statue of critter-loving St. Francis of Assisi.

"They especially like the shutters. Garbage cans, they love - they're under the lip where you put your hand. They're in the barbecue pit — you can see the egg sacks right there. They were actually on the air conditioner, which is bad because there's a gap into the house. They're on the windows. And I'm not going in the shed," she says.

The spiders seemed to come from nowhere a few weeks ago when Ferrara cleared out the garage for a yard sale. She thought she might be the victim of a weird, invasive species infestation, after she identified the spiders through photos on the

Internet. The bite of this sub-species of the dreaded black widow spider can cause fiery, cramping pain and delirium.

But like black widow, brown widows make a home in the Lowcountry and are a fact of life.

"A lot of times they'll play possum. They hide up in the egg (sack) and roll up in a ball so they look like an egg," Ferrara said.

They've taken over the Ferraras home because they like it there.

"I live in Summerville and I'll tell you something — they're everywhere. I could find dozens of them in a day if I wanted to," said conservationist Roark Ferguson, of Roark's Reptile Safari. "They like cool, dark places." Like an idle car or a garage. Ferguson astounds people by telling them he can find a black or brown widow at their home in 15 minutes, then doing it. And oh, the news gets worse.

"It's one of the most painful bites in the world. It's maddening pain for 48 hours," Ferguson said. "I would say to most people, let the spiders live. But I make an exception for female black widows." The good news — if you want to call it that — is that fewer than one person every year dies from a spider bite in the United States.

The fix for black or brown widows is simple: bug killer. Around Ferrara's house, the spiders have become so thick she likely will have to resort to a professional pest control company. She's already gone through four jugs of insecticide. She's lived in her Summerville home for 20 years and has seen a few black widows over that time. Now she's up to her neck in arachnids.

"I've been having nightmares. These things have gotten to the point where we go in at night, come out in the morning and there's webs on the cars," she said. She's begun to see webs in the house. "That scares the bejeezers out of me."

Reach Bo Petersen at 745-5852 or bpetersen@postandcourier.com.