On Spiders

LOL Bella! You're just like me.

That's kind of scary Bella. I think it's be healthy for you to live in a place with minimal spider population, though right now I'm not quite sure if there are any such places. From what you wrote here it seems that the little critters could pose a serious threat to your health.

Wolf spiders move very fast. WATCH OUT1

One hot summer day, my father, in his youth, fell asleep in the shade of a tree. He awakened to the feeling of a small chick sitting on his chest. It turned out to be a very large "blond" tarantula. He realized that when it awakened and opened up its legs. He kept it as a pet for a long time.

That's sweet. IT adopted HIM.

Once, the daughter of a woman I know got bit by a brown recluse. After that, both went around terrified. They captured, then killed one of the lrgest wolf spiders I have ever seen and went about the property asking if it was a brown recluse. Invariably, the persons answered "Yes." I think they were wishing to appear knowledgeable and afraid to be wrong if it really was one. I alone told her it was a wolf spider, for which she later thanked me, after she had found a more authoritative answer. This bit of knowledge, and a length of passed time, gradually calmed the hysteria they felt.

When I was a teenager we had Black and Yellow Argiope spiders in the field behind the house. We used to catch grasshoppers and throw into their webs. Each year there were more and more spiders. I think it's because we were feeding them.

I really have to stop coming in here, lol.

I remember those kind of spiders. I haven't seen any around here, though.

I'm wondering if they have them up north because I could swear I've seen them or at least ones that look a lot like them with the bright yellow.

I used to see those zipper-spiders (the zigzag in their webs always reminded me of zippers) in the burbs where I grew up - in the garden. We called them garden spiders, actually. I get the big butted orb weavers here in the city. They can be pretty big by september/october.

looks like there's a biiiig class of spiders called orb weavers. These are the type we have around my house....



I think it's hard to take shots of the type here as they are mostly nocturnal.

That's one I don't recall seeing before.

More brown recluse paranoia...

My daughter and I were hanging out on her bed this morning after she woke up, and a spider (not huge, not tiny) crawled out of the comforter and up her arm. She jumped, though she didn't panic (she usually likes spiders, just as she clarified later, not ON her), I shooed it off, we took a look at it. It was very dark brown, not a type I recognized. I got it into a jar, put on a lid, and we started the investigation.

As far as I can tell, it's an "ant-mimic" spider. It looks something like this:



However, it looks enough like this that I'm not completely relaxed about the whole thing:



(Yes, that's a brown recluse.)

It's still in the jar and either dead or dying, which I feel badly about, but I'm not taking any chances with any potential brown recluses, no matter how small that chance may be (I really don't think that's actually it...)

I actually think I have the wrong one, but it's the closest I could find.

The coolest looking spider I've seen wild was a bright green one in deep woods - this is close to what it looked like:

looks like my local spider pack are called barn spiders - a smaller, but still large, subgroup in the orb weaving family.

When I was a letter carrier, I encountered a large garden spider. I was walking between two houses "fingering my mail", i.e., sorting the pack between fingers for rapid deposit in mail boxes. When I looked up, my nose was about a foot from what appeared to be the largest spider I had ever seen on a web eye-level between two bushes. I jumped back automatically, and spent a good fifteen minutes recovering and resorting all the letters and magazines that flew out of my bag. Now I know that they are harmless.

Harmless, but creepy making skin contact.

I really don't mind spiders if they stay where I can keep an eye on them. If I walk into a web, who knows where the spider ends up. If I know the web is there, I'll avoid it. These nocturnal weavers seemed to always build in the same spot. Easy to avoid once you got to know them.

Yes, Littlek. The feeling of a web on my face is scary precisely because I do not know where the spider is. I don't like them in my hair, and WORST OF ALL, on my nose.

I can almost predict my dreams tonight.