Our finer-than-usual weather continued yesterday morning, apart from gusty weather and occasional spats of blowing rain. Since a lot of our friends had to hurr-evac, we’ve been tucking up other people’s houses and feeding dogs.
The wind had died down and it wasn’t raining early yesterday evening, so we put the baby in the stroller and set out to feed those dogs again. “Wow, look at that arm of clouds blowing toward us,” we remarked, moseying down the street. As soon as we let our friends’ dogs out, Hurricane Isaac arrived to meet Baby Isaac. So there we are, stranded at our friends’ house alone with some soggy dogs (sorry guys!) and tropical storm-force winds whipping rivers of rain through the air. Whoops. Then we ran home.
Isaac didn’t mind a bit, but he was a little damp…ok, completely soaked and somewhat unsure about the whole thing. Chris was trying to go get the car for us but we ran after him for fun. The family who gets soaked together…you know…drips all over the floor together!
So as Isaac and I were running through Isaac after Chris, we had to slow down to cross the street near a storm drain. Ick—was that a huge spider ducking for cover? It made another appearance—black leg-span the size of a quarter, bulbous black body, blood-red hourglass. I shrieked and squished it enthusiastically as the wind howled around us, further adding to Baby Isaac’s confusion.
That would be the second black widow we’ve seen around our house recently. The first one I discovered ON THE BABY POOL moments after Isaac and I got out and drained it. That day, I swept it into a baggie to examine it and compare it to pictures online. Dead ringer. Chris squashed a third black widow on our patio this afternoon. And I will tell you what—I am a lot more concerned about black widow spiders than hurricanes and power outages any day. YIKES!