I’ve been checking this one spot along my walk to work all Spring, a row of metal signposts along a parking lot. These are simply dark metal objects that absorb what heat there is, and while they look barren and uninteresting, they have been a reliable home for a population of small spiders.

On Sunday, I saw nothing there. Yesterday, Monday, I saw this:

It’s silk. Just a few strands of spider silk across the bar, telling me that spiders have moved in. All of the signposts have silk to varying degrees, suggesting that maybe there was a recent hatch and a spider swarm is repopulating the area.

It’s reassuring to see, even as I’m buried under grading. Just two weeks to go before the semester ends and 6 months of sabbatical begins.

Blue seems to like her new housing. She even likes the artificial flowers I gave her, climbing to the top and pressing her face against the glass.

She’s been living in a plexiglas cube that used to be quite comfortable for her, but that pile of molts I keep on top is testimony that she just keeps on growing.

So crowded. So shabby. So this morning I relocated her to a huge, roomy 29 gallon fish tank, about 75cm x 25cm, with high class furnishings.

If you want to see it, you can get the full story on Patreon.

OK, if you don’t want to subscribe, I’ve also posted a photo on Instagram.

Male tarantulas, when they reach sexual maturity, are focused on wandering away to find sex, to the point where they may lose interest in eating.

Females, on the other hand, turn into voracious consumers of calories.

Blue wants her morning mealworm, and strikes like lightning.

Blue is the lab mascot, a Chromatopelma cyaneopubescens, and after their last molt, they’ve acquired the dark blue and blue-green colors of a mature greenbottle blue tarantula, and maybe reached sexual maturity. I’ve been checking out those palps, and they look very feminine to me.

Let me know what you think.

Fortunately, Blue is a perfectly good name for a female. Or male. Or immature juvenile.

Day one:

Day two:

And now, day three:

I don’t think it’s gotten any more complex, but is it changing?

Yesterday:

Today:

Isn’t complexity fun?

My black widows were relocated to new empty cages, and overnight they filled them with beautiful, intricate cobwebs, like this one.

It looks chaotic, but I can trace a couple of gumfoot lines in there that have bracing to allow them to hoist up any prey that stumbles into them.