I didn’t care much for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, so today I made the movie I wanted. It didn’t require hundreds of millions of dollars, either. I bought some new black widows, and today is the day they got moved into brand new shiny containers.
See, Marvel? That’s how it is done.
Is it possible to have too many baby spiders?
No, it is not. Just ask their mother.
Mary and I thought our yard Argiope was looking lonely, so we visited a local breeding ground and snatched up a couple more. This is a new female, already adapting to life in our yard.
We also grabbed a couple of smaller Argiope, which might be males, or are simply too young to have the markings. They’re lurking somewhere in the underbrush.
That you can use your home computer as a spider incubator?
I keep several containers of Parasteatoda on top of my Mac Mini, where they thrive in the warmth and provide endless hours of entertainment while I’m working. All four of these contain egg sacs, and three of the four have hatched out this morning!
Time to party!
That isn’t the only clutch to emerge today. Here’s another:
These little guys are popping out everywhere — we’re surrounded by a cloud of little baby Parasteatoda.
actually, damsel is more of a light snack.
btw, arm is much, much better today. still on steroids and painkillers, but improvement is noticeable.
We found another Argiope down the street. She’d made a spectacular catch.
Her web is in a great location, because she had a second dragonfly trussed up and awaiting consumption.
These are top predators in their community, except for the birds. But the birds don’t want to stick their beaks in a sticky web.
Now you can. It’s pretty amazing how much silk she can produce so quickly.
Showing off our lavely backyard Argiope aurantia. She’s an ornament to our house.
One of the virtues of the heat is that we have lazily allowed our backyard to run wild. Thigh-high grasses, thistles, strange forbs, all kinds of happy weeds are growing everywhere, and with them comes the fierce invertebrates. Welcome home, Argiope aurantia! The queen of our yard has returned, finding a bounty of grasshoppers and other insects thriving in her domain!
Our backyard is fenced off and isolated from the sidewalk and road, so I hope none of the philistines in the city works department are going to complain and order it all cut down. I like my personal backyard jungle.
