Getting away from the decaying, abandoned human homes for a bit, we acted on a tip from a colleague and visited Stahler prairie, a lovely spot of land near the university that was donated to us for research and teaching. I didn’t even know it existed until this morning! Those ecologists…always keeping secrets from us lab geeks. But now we know, and we went strolling through the grasses. That’s Mary, off in the distance.

We were disappointed at first — the place is buzzing with bugs, and we found quite a few large webs, but we didn’t see much of the resident spiders. Big empty webs meant there had to be a webspinner nearby, but these are cunning beasts and very good at hiding. We finally found one big Neoscona cozy deep down in a tube made of a furled leaf.

We’ll be back, Stahler Prairie! We’re figuring you out and we shall tease out your secrets!