The Widow

Back when I was living in Barstow, I thought it would be cool to keep a Black Widow. Having had one brought to me, I kept it in an old, unused baby bottle. Halloween was about 3 weeks away, so I figured that the widow would be comfortable in this type of enclosure until the holiday, after which I was going to release it into the wild.

Every day I gathered as many bugs as I could find to ensure that my little Widow would not go hungry. I would drop 2, sometimes 3 bugs a day into her bottle thinking that she would be overjoyed at the abundance of food.
Over the course of a few days I started to notice how fat she was getting, and I just chalked it up to good eating, and great care-giving on my part.

She had affixed a web at the top of the bottle, where she would eat and hang all day.
Every morning I would check on her, and make sure that she was eating well.
She grew fatter and fatter until one morning, I found her hanging in her web as usual-with one exception;

My Widow’s bottom half had fallen off.

She never made it to Halloween, and I have since learned to not use food as a means to make one happy.
Lesson learned.
RIP Little Widow.