Spiders and ants and skunks... oh my!

Things here are pretty busy as usual...babysitting a lot, my husband's job and our various ministries...and recently added to my husband's to do list is pest control. The other day he went over to our friend's place place to pull a dead skunk out from under their house, which must have smelled horrible... decaying skunk... YUCK! I just hope this doesn't happen at our place since we recently found a family of skunks underneath our shed in the back. Hopefully the trauma of my husband spraying them with a garden hose will scare them off for good, but only time will tell.

Before that we had ant infestation issues, but my husband sprayed all places of entry and put some grits right by there ant hill (which apparently makes them gassy, but since ants are unable to pass gas they just blow up), which seems to have worked because the ant population seems to have diminished considerably.


That's all in the back of the house, in the front we have continually crossed paths with some black widows, just the other night my husband reached inside the mailbox to see if there was any mail, and was surprised to find a black widow that had taken up residence in there. My husband sprayed the spider with Mrs. Myers, a non-toxic, lavender scented cleaning solution that killed the ants that had found their way into the house. We are hoping that Mrs. Myers will kill the black widows too. Any other ideas to kill black widow spiders?