The Mystery of the Old Gazebo

The other daaaay, we’d gone walking around the Pomme de Terre river, and just off the bike trail there is an old gazebo. It’s weathered, lichen-covered, and a bit creaky, but it’s also covered with spectacular orb webs, so we were curious to find out who was living there.

We poked around, and a couple of spiders scurried out, but I was baffled…the ones we caught didn’t look like orb weavers, they seemed to be Theridion, or social cobweb spiders. I guess they’re just lurking, taking advantage of any small prey caught in another spider’s web. The actual weavers of those webs couldn’t be found anywhere. I suspect the reason for that is that smack in the middle of the gazebo is a swallow’s nest, so any reasonably large spider is going to hide during the day an only emerge at night.

We’re tempted to revisit at night, except that another feature of the gazebo is all the hearts and INITIALS+INITIALS carved into the wood. We might interrupt more mammalian activity.

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Yeah, but was it a radioactive spider?

Three boys in Bolivia found a black widow spider.

“Thinking it would give them superhero powers, they prodded it with a stick until it bit each of them in turn,” the official, Virgilio Pietro, said.

The boy’s mom found them crying, so she rushed the siblings to a nearby health center, which transferred them to a nearby hospital, Telemundo said.

They’re fine now. They did not turn into spider-boys.

Note that they had to torture the spider to get it to bite them in the first place. Don’t do that. Don’t blame the spider. The spider knows that with great venom comes great responsibility, and that boys taste yucky.

Back to the spider grind

I took a tour of my house this morning to see how the spiders were shaping up. I found lots, even more than I did last week. Some were familiar, like Attulus fasciger, who had captured a mosquito-like creature. Good work, young lady!

Of course there were lots of Salticus scenicus around.

The exciting but somewhat disappointing discovery was that Parasteatoda abounded — they’d colonized several inset corners of the house and areas around the downspouts, where they had good cover and great places to hide.

The disappointing part was my own failure: I couldn’t get a good picture of any of them! They were all living in little houses made of plant debris, and if I tapped on them to ask them to come out, they did a typical Parasteatoda thing: they’d immediately bungee straight down to the ground. They’re conveniently predictable when trying to catch them, but I just wanted to say hello and take a picture.
To see what I mean about the difficulty, I saved one photo of one tucked into a bit of dried flower petal, with just her blurry butt sticking out.

I’ve got 4 of these spider nests tagged now, and I’ll be back tomorrow and will try to get some better pictures. Except I think we’ve got thunderstorms predicted for Sunday…so maybe a little later.

You can see the photos, if you really want to, on Patreon or Instagram, as usual.

Classic orb

A reader sent this in — I’m envious. I’ve been eyeing various likely sites for webs, haven’t seen any of the orb webs yet. I’m in the land of cobwebs and jumping spiders right now, and haven’t had much of an opportunity to get out and explore yet.

Soon, though. I’ll be fetching my wife in about two weeks, and then it’s a summer of visiting lonely empty places with lots of spiders. Romantic!

I only find out now about this?

I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, and no one ever told me about the Pacific folding trap-door spider. I sure never saw one. But this lucky woman out walking her dog saw one on the sidewalk and — oh what a waste — ran away.

Experts say the spider she spotted is a Pacific folding trap-door spider. It’s not a tarantula, but it is a “tarantuloid” – a related type of arachnid – according to Jaymie Chudiak, general manager of the Victoria Bug Zoo.

“It is the closest thing we have to a tarantula,” Chudiak said. “They are incredibly beautiful, but also very large, so people who do see them go, ‘Oh my gosh, what is that? It’s enormous.’ But they’re actually extremely docile and timid.”

If you want, there’s a picture at the link. It’s beautiful.

I also learned this.

Like tarantulas, there is a commercial market that sells Folding Trapdoor Spiders. Many species in this genus are brown or dark brown. The black, native Pacific Folding Door Trapdoor Spider is commonly sold in the Pacific Northwest as a pet.

“Commonly”? “Commonly”? It is true. I wasted my youth, because I never saw one. Now I want to.

Bring me…a shrubbery!

I made my usual rounds of the house, seeking spiders, today. In particular, I have my eyes on this:

It’s some kind of twiggy bush growing near my house — I have no idea what it is, my resident plant-identifier is off in Colorado, neglecting my needs — but what you can’t see in this, as in all the shrubberies around my house, is that there are delicate lines of silk connecting all the branches. It’s true, I look in my yard with all the newly budded plants around it, and all I see are frames for holding spider silk. I stared at that for about a half hour, possibly making the neighbors wonder if I was already going mental, tracing each branch and every strand of silk, hoping to find the perpetrator.

I did not.

I will be checking regularly throughout this spring, and I’m certain that at some point I will catch them in the act. It’s just a matter of time, and they will be mine.

I did find other spiders on the wall, though. The usual zebra jumpers and asiatic wall jumping spiders…

…but also this mysterious young lady. Curious. She looks a bit like Attulus, but so dark. I see a lot of variation in color, though, so I don’t know.

Then, I struck gold. I found the first Parasteatoda specimen I’ve seen outdoors since last year. She even killed a mosquito for me!

I want you to know, though, that in order take her picture, I had to get down on my knees in the dirt. Then I had to get even lower and lie on my side to get the right angle. I think it’s going to be laundry day.

As usual, the spider photos are tucked away on Instagram, iNaturalist, and Patreon if you want to see them.

This is not a photo of a spider

I wouldn’t do that to you. This is a single line of webbing on a metal signpost.

I wandered around on a walk this afternoon, and while I didn’t find any spiders, I’ve started noticing that everything everywhere is held together with delicate tracings of silk, fueling my new hypothesis that what’s really holding the planet together is the work of spiders.

I haven’t yet found any spider associated with this particular strand of silk, although there were many similar lines — therefore, since it’s invisible and holds all of earth together, it must be Jesus. I’ll keep looking and see if I can get a photo of Him. (Note: more likely to be a Her, and not a vertebrate at all, which leads to some provocative corollaries to my hypothesis.)

Provided with toys and spider scouting for boys

I wanted to get out and get some exercise today, and also see how the local spider populations are doing. It was not a great outing — the horticulture garden is closed, as is Pomme de Terre park, so the usual haunts where I can go for a nice long walk and see lots of varieties of habitats were inaccessible. I finally ended up at East Side Park, a small central city park, mostly mowed grass, kiddie play structures, and an assortment of picnic tables. Not the best sort of place for wild spiders. Also, it’s been a bit neglected during the pandemic. I saw lots of broken glass (someone snuck out there with the cooking sherry, I noticed), so not entirely the best place for kids right now.

I needed the exercise. I found I’m out of shape from my winter’s languor. I was either in a half crouch, stooped over, or standing on tip-toe holding up my camera, in order to take these photos, and I was trembling after 10 minutes, so I’d just aim and take a dozen photos hoping one of them would be usable.

The park does have a big ol’ band shell, though, and I crawled around that for a while and found 4 different species without looking too hard. It’s a rather grungy structure right now, needing a good power wash, and I found lots of webs clotted with dead insects, especially mosquitos, draped all over the walls. Most of them looked ancient, probably from last summer.

But there were a few new spiders living there! I found 4 species on the side of this one building and you can see the photos on Patreon and also on Instagram and under the #InverteFest tag and the Spiders of Minnesota page. I’m not hiding them, I’m just trying to avoid sticking spiders in the faces of arachnophobes here.

Spider search…accomplished!

I went all around my house, looking high and low for spiders. The good news is that my house is covered with spider food. Gnats, flies, skeeters, bugs of all sort clinging to the fences and walls and window screens. The predators can’t be far behind!

If I were a spider, I’d want to be here, pigging out on the deliciousness.

And the spiders are here! The first spiders I’ve seen outdoors this spring!

I found a half dozen Salticus scenicus scampering about, looking fit and healthy — maybe too healthy, because they were zooming around at high speed, making it difficult to take pictures of them. I took a few, anyway, and posted them on my Patreon page and Instagram.

The game is afoot! Spider season is upon us!