One of These Surprises is Not Fun! (Creepy Alert)

[so lucky]

Continuing in my Sweet Potato Surprise theme, I dug up half the planted area this morning and got these:

And this!

Underside:

I had never seen a black widow before, so it was kind of thrilling, but in a creepy way.
Anyway, I was proud of my sweet potatoes!

 

[canesisters]

LOL! It'ss funny that you've never seen one. Around my place, if you see a spider in a web it is almost surely a black widow. Luckly they are not aggressive (come after you) or I'd never leave the house.

That is an IMPRESSIVE haul of sweet potatoes. Are you going to store them as is, or can them?


eta : Just looked at it again.... are you sure it's a black widow - something looks 'off'.

 

[Jared77]

Very impressive on both accounts!

Between your pics & Journey's pics I'm getting tempted to grow some next year.

 

[so lucky]

Debbie, what looks off about the critter? I checked a lot of pics on the net. But like I said, I had never met one before, so....

 

[canesisters]

I had to go look at a bunch of pictures to figure it out (and now have a BAD case of the creepy-crawlies)
The proportions looked odd. All the ones I see are tiny and are almost nothing but big, round, 'head of a pin' bodies with very delicate, super thin legs. I've never seen markings on the top side but there are lots of variations on their markings. The ones here are always super shiny black.
Probably just regional differences bacause most of the ones I saw on-line looked more like your nasty suprise than my usual junk pile lurkers.
Glad that you saw it first - there were a lot of pictures out there of the nasty results of bad bites....

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

There is something called a Northern Black Widow, and since Missouri is fairly high on the map, it's possible. The Northern ones are much rarer and have slightly different markings (along with possible variations in body shape). I think that Northern Black Widows are a subspecies? Anyway, I'm sort of glad that I haven't run into one yet - Brown Recluses are enough.

That is an impressive crop of sweet potatoes, enjoy!

 

[so lucky]

We should have put a coin in there with it for size reference. It was about one and a quarter inches long, including legs.

 

[Smart Red]

Great job on growing those beautiful sweet taters! They look delicious and I am envious!

 

[baymule]

Nice sweet potatoes! I'll be digging mine soon too.

 

[lesa]

Nice job on the sweet potatoes! They look huge! You can keep the spider....