Every spring around this time we get tons of these guys, and I’ve always just shied away from them, leaning on the idea that the orangey color was mother nature’s warning to stay away. But when someone mentioned they thought it might be a relative of the Black Widow, I figured I’d better look it up.

Turns out the scary colors are false advertising, which seems to be a pattern in our local spiders. The banana spider looks like it could rip your face off, but it’s the brown recluse that’ll do the serious damage.

If I ever really decide to turn tail and run away from New Orleans, I swear it won’t be because of the dysfunction, the heat or the hurricanes- it’ll be the critters that does me in.

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