You want to see widows? Come to Flagstaff. This summer during the
monsoon, we had an infestation. One is a curiosity, but by the
fifteenth or sixteenth, you don't care how "shy" they are, you just
want them gone. You vacuum and dust like you've come down with a bad
case of OCD. When you discover a dozen on the front porch, you cut down
every shrub in the foundation planting (It was hideous anyway) When one
of the kids wakes up in the middle of the night with a big fat widow
crawling across his chest, you about lose it and you head for the
garden center and you spray. And it wasn't just us, everybody on the
east side of town had their spider stories.

When we went down to San Carlos and were picking through trash heaps
for shells, I was quite aware that, having sat under the cactus in the
Sonoran Desert, any arthropods living in them weren't going to be
hermit crabs. I kept them sealed in a cooler until we got home and they
could have a nice soak in bleach.