Shirtsleeve weather, the sun is shining bright, and there are stirrings in the darkness. I prowled about my yard, searching for spiders, but the best I could find was spider-sign — they’re out and about, leaving strands of silk in crevices and corners, but I saw none.

That is, until I turned to the ever-reliable compost bin. I found even more silk everywhere in there, but to find an inhabitant I had to bend over and stick my head upside down deep into the bin, way down low until I was look just above the edge of the decaying plants, and there at last I found one, a familiar old friend, Steatoda borealis.

S. borealis is entirely black in body color, and she was on the side of a black bin, in shadow, deep in darkness, so getting any kind of photo was difficult. But there she was, my first Theridiidae of the new season.

This compost bin is a favored spot. I think they snuggle down in the layers of rotting glop and overwinter there, and then they’re the first to reappear once the weather well and truly breaks. It’s kind of sweet to think of them sleeping down in the dark, in the mulch, all winter long, waiting to reemerge.

I haven’t been showing off my spiders much lately. There’s a reason for that. They still think it’s winter, so they’re all hunkered down in their mossy, silk-covered nests, and they don’t come out much, and when they do, they’re shy and not very photogenic. Here’s the best black widow shot I could get today.

I didn’t do myself any favors by providing them with a fairly cluttered environment, but they seem to like a space where they can hide and only come out to grab some food, and then retire quickly back into their refuge. They’re very retiring little ladies.

Minnesota is warming up, though. The snow is mostly gone, and I occasionally see jumping spiders sunning themselves, so I’m hoping to go hunting native spiders again soon.

My wife is working today, and before she left at 6:30am she left me a gift on my desk, a wolf spider.

She know me well. Now, though, what do I do to reciprocate? Should I get her a prettier spider? My imagination is limited.

Roger, a male Latrodectus mactans, is still coexisting contentedly with his partner.

I’m still disappointed that the female of the pair hasn’t yet produced any egg sacs. You have done your duty, haven’t you, Roger? I need children.

I feel like a nagging mother-in-law now.

Sometimes it pays off.

Although…evolution isn’t driven by intent. Just be.

Perhaps, like me, you have been concerned about the fate of the Boys, the pair of Latrodectus males I introduced to the females yesterday. The first thing I did this morning was to check to see if they are still alive. They are!

They are hard to spot. I have a fairly messy environment for them to live in, with all that moss and sticks, and I’m realizing that that stripey zebra-like banding that young males have is actually good camouflage in a natural environment. But there they are, just hanging around, with (I hope) cocky grins on their faces because had a glorious experience with a lady…who let them live.

I’m going to leave them there for another day or two because I don’t actually know if they successfully mated yet, before I move them to take their chances with another female.

It’s going to be a good day. I was in the kitchen early in the morning, fixing a cup of tea, when a very tiny friend came to visit. She was exploring the cupboards when I made her sit down for a quick photo shoot.

Even in the depths of winter spiders can always find refuge in my home.

I have two male Latrodectus left. Only two. Males are more fragile and die off more readily, and also, they’re so small compared to the females that I wasn’t confident that they were fully mature, so I held off and held off on bringing the sexes together, and I think some of the males died of frustration.

So only two masculine males with swollen dripping pedipalps. I finally got brave enough to release them into cages with two females, the mighty Guinevir and the devious secretive Morgan. They are huge.

They’d eaten well yesterday, and looked virtually spherical. I was cautious, and introduced the males into complex environment of the female’s lairs. They immediately scurried deep into the tangle of moss and silk, and I will have no idea if a successful mating has occurred until I see egg sacs.

If I see the males alive again in the next few days, I’ll mount a rescue mission and extract them so I can introduce them to some of the other females.

Let’s hope they succeed in their mission of boldly penetrating the secret spaces of these sex-starved females.

On no! It’s sad news.

Biologists in regions of the Southern U.S. noticed that the iconic black widow spider — known for its telltale hourglass mark and venomous bite — often disappeared when a different species, brown widows, showed up. Now, new research published in the Annals of the Entomological Society of America provides compelling evidence that the brown widows are indeed driving Southern black widows out, in part by attacking and killing the well-known arachnids.

“They don’t seem to be good neighbors with each other,” Louis Coticchio, a biologist and graduate student at the University of South Florida who led the research, told Mashable.

It’s specifically the brown widows who have their hate on for black widows.

To best see what’s transpiring between these two widow species, Coticchio tested close brown widow interactions with three related spider species: the Southern black widow, the red house spider (Nesticodes rufipes), and the triangulate cobweb spider (Steatoda triangulosa). The interactions happened in containers filled with twigs and branches.

The results were stark. Brown widows were 6.6 times more likely to aggressively attack the black widows compared with the other species.

Can’t we all get along? I can tell you from personal experience that black widows are calm, mellow spiders who don’t want any trouble — they just like to chill in some twigs and branches and be at peace with the world.

This news makes me want to run over to the lab and cuddle and snuggle with my little guys, give ’em a snack, and tell them that I appreciate them. But I can’t! I’m snowed in, the sidewalks and roads are treacherous, and my wife, who is trapped at work, texted me to sternly tell me I’m not allowed to clear the driveway until she’s home to make sure she doesn’t become a widow.