Every year, there’s a little freak-out from Seattle communities about spider season.
Seattle’s annual spider season has arrived, driven primarily by mature male giant house spiders actively searching for mates indoors during August and September.
We never noticed anything in particular about spiders in the fall when we lived there. I suspect it’s nothing but a media-fed frenzy that has little connection to reality.
It’s also not a Seattle thing. We get a surge in spider visibility in the fall, too, and it’s simply because some common spider species that live near humans are in frantic mating mode as the warm weather starts to go away. Relax.
I will say, though, that one spider-fact that’s special about Seattle is the swarms of cross spiders, these spectacular orb-weavers, that are everywhere. I remember them from when I was a kid. Or rather, maybe what’s special is that where I live now is totally lacking in Araneus diadematus. We’re in a weird hole in its range.
This reminds me of how some New Yorkers think NYC is the only city with convenience stores, or the only place where a person might have to travel 30 minutes or more to see a friend.
My oldest brother lived up in the hills outside Tacoma. It was beautiful there except for the giant slugs all over everything in the mornings.
When I was a kid, we had one of these living outside the kitchen window. Mom would often point how beautiful the web was the spider build each day.
She did not clean that window all summer so the spider could live in peace.
my patio is covered in cross orb weavers
Do we know why that is? Must be some reason for it?
Complete fabrication by the media. I’ve never heard anyone here refer to “spider season”, or even suggest that our spiders were unusual.
And yeah, why didn’t they go with slugs? Seattle Slug Season could totally be a thing.
Oh, yeah, I remember the swarms of slugs every morning: brown, leopard, and banana. Any dark damp space was full of them.
Last time we visited Auburn, we’d go for walks every day to check out the cross spider population. They were thick in the shrubbery.
I have no idea why they are missing around here. Maybe I should investigate…although it’s tough to research an absence.
Although, they’re also common across Europe, except for a big gaping hole in central Spain. That might be a clue. There has also been a recent rapid decline in Switzerland, which is being blamed on a loss of flying insects. That might be going on in places with heavy agriculture and pesticide use.
Might it be that Seattle has temperate weather year-round while Morris has intensely cold winters and hot summers?
They are found in SE Minnesota and Canada, so there’s no simple climate answer. They are an introduced species in North America, so it could just be they haven’t gotten here yet.
@6 Brian–My perception is the other way around. Fall seems like the season when the spiders all decide to build webs across doorways, but I don’t even notice the slugs. But it’s an annoyance, not some kind of apocalypse (though I will be glad when I can leave the house without destroying some arachnid’s web).
Ah fall. The mountain ash tree in the backyard is covered in ripening red berries. The robins wait until the berries are ripe, then strip the tree in a three day frenzy. But some years, a flock of cedar waxwings comes through first, feasts on the mountain ash berries, and for dessert plucks those big spiders out of the center of their orb webs.
Only an arachophile could love such a bulbous, pus-filled creature. “Step on it, Henry! Step on it!” — Gary Larson