Good morning spider!

Do you have a friendly little feral spider in your house who will sometimes scurry up to you in the morning and wave a leg? You’re missing out if not.

The only bad thing is that they’re too busy living their own lives to stop and pose for a while. I do what I can with an unwieldy macro camera.

An arachnologist fantasizing about summer in February

I have been daydreaming about doing some collecting trips this summer — I have been seduced by the exotic opportunities of tromping around the southern part of Minnesota, place like Pipestone and maybe even making forays into South Dakota and Iowa. Yeah! Get wild with it!

And then, the American Arachnological Society announces the location of their 2024 meeting. It’s going to be in Chetumal, Mexico.

Chetumal is located in the south of the state of Quintana Roo, on the border with Belize. It’s a small town surrounded by mangrove swamps and forest, lagoons such as Bacalar, home to numerous chelicerates in addition to Mayan remains. It faces a gigantic bay that is a reserve for manatees and is located at the gateway to the Caribbean.

“home to numerous chelicerates” isn’t normal advertising copy for a travel destination, but you’ve got to know your audience. Think of the spiders you could find! Suddenly, the south of Minnesota looks tepid and boring.

I have some trepidations. I have zero confidence in airlines anymore, after that catastrophic collapse of my last trip to AAS (the meeting was in upstate NY, couldn’t even get there because airlines kept canceling flights, ended up sitting in the Minneapolis airport for a couple of days). I don’t know if I can scrape any money out of my university travel budget after that expensive debacle.

On the plus side, I do have some Patreon savings I could use — and of course I’d have to fill my Patreon page with travel photos of beautiful Chetumal. You know, the usual touristy things of closeups of spiders in the mangrove swamps. I’ve never been on the glitzy side of scientific conferences, so this might be my last chance. And it’s Mexico! I love Mexico!

So now I begin a period of indecisive agonizing, to go or not to go. I may end up looking at my budget and deciding it’s not possible, but as long as I haven’t done any accounting, I can dream.

Today is a feeding day

Every Tuesday and Friday, I hang out with the spiders and give them flies and mealworms to eat. I am a good and supportive boss. Unfortunately, the one thing I expect of them is that they produce egg sacs for me, and they haven’t been doing their job. I provide humidifiers, I maintain a strict July-like light schedule, I keep them warm, and what do they give me? Nada. Bupkis.

I’m beginning to think I might need to modify the incentives here.

Except…it would be counterproductive to do that to the females, and most of the male are already dead due to natural causes (which, for spiders, includes cannibalism). It’s a little bit frustrating.

Bronze pipework

This big skinny beast is living right over an electrical outlet in my dining room, and I needed to plug something in…I decided not to. I didn’t think it worthwhile to disturb them right away, I’ll give them a chance to move later.

It’s Pholcus, either phalangioides or manueli but they didn’t turn to look at me so I could tell. Maybe I’ll get a look at their face later.

I do like the long lean legs that look like bronze or copper piping, though.

Spider season has come early

We are experiencing unseasonably warm winter weather here in Minnesota — it’s been above freezing for a week, the snow is all melting, I can go outside without a coat, all that stuff you might take for granted in tropical states, like Kansas. But you know what that means? The spiders are coming out! We’re finding little adorable jumping spiders all over the place, like this one:

Attulus fasciger

It’s not all delightful news, though. I don’t trust the weather. We could get another arctic blast in February, and then these early risers are going to get a rude shock.

They better all come into my house to stay warm.

A tragic day

My lovely young black widow spider died overnight. I am heartbroken. She was so full of life and deliciousness!


You can leave memorial donations on PayPal or you can join my Patreon. All donations should be given in the name of Lolth, and will be used to purchase a replacement…or a few replacements, so I can breed a mighty army in her name.

Code 415

“Ma’am, is that your husband in the sack of kitchen scraps and half-digested body parts?”

Not a happy morning — that Steatoda borealis I paired up earlier is no longer a pair. I guess she got a hungry.

Well, this is a bother. That was my last adult male — I’ve got about two dozen juvenies growing up in the incubator — and this has been a chronic problem. Every winter, all the spiders start eating less, lose all interest in sex, and stop laying eggs, despite my efforts at fooling them with temperature and a July-like light schedule. Last summer I’d come in an find fresh egg sacs every day; this winter, they dry up and even start dying.
I guess this just means I really have to do the bulk of my research in the summer…or maybe I’ll have to spend the winter trying to figure out how wild spiders survive the cold.