Harmless, eh? Hope so. We have brown recluse and black widows. I have never seen a brown recluse (no suprise). See Black widows fairly often. My shop/garage is attached to the house, so most mornings I shuffel down to the shop , drink my hot tea and check email and the BCF. One morning I sat down at my desk and saw a black widow sitting on the top. Without thinking, I reached out and smacked it. Could have been a real dumb move, fortunatly it wasn't. After my nerves settled down, I called the bug people. We have to have them out every quarter. We live in a very heavily wooded area.
Tinkerman