If you thought yesterday's reference to spiders seemed to have a "dogwhistle" tone to it, you were right. The audience there was other people who also live in hot, dry places.

For reasons of nefariousness coincidence, we usually can only see a spider's back, not its underside. Once you've seen enough black widows, though, you become familiar with the overall shape and sheen of them, and any spider that looks like that is almost certainly a black widow. If it's brown, it might be a brown widow—or a mutant on its way to becoming a black widow, so kill it anyway!

I seriously hate how plentiful those little monsters are around Sacramento...

This got me rememering again this morning that, while it is a lovely book and a classic, I sometimes feel (unpopular opinion alert!) that Charlotte's Web is also primarily pro-spider propaganda. If you don't believe me, ask your friendly neighborhood arachnophobe. Yick!