Little Miss Spider

I like spiders. I do not love them, but I like them. I have read enough information about spiders to know that they are good for the environment. I don't necessarily want to hold or touch them, but they do not bother me. If they scare my children, I have no problem killing them, but if they are small enough, I will catch and release them into the wild.

During the summer we have these big brown spiders that come and visit our great outdoors. They build fantastic, detailed, webs, and their construction and persistence amazes me. My husband and I love to look closely at the web construction to discover the way in which it was formed.

We have one particular spider who builds a web every night between our roof and patio table umbrella. for some reason, by morning, it vanishes. By nightfall, she is again, working diligently to rebuild her home, in hopes of snagging a delicious bug.

The other night I decided to give her a boost in the hunting and capturing portion of her life. After long hours she had once again built a tremendous web and sat, patiently in the middle of it, waiting for dinner. Since our garage is littered with easy-to-catch crickets I made my way to the garage, grabbed a foreboding creature, gagged a little while it was jumping in my hand trying to escape, ran to the back yard, called my husband to witness the killing, and threw the cricket right in to the web. Cool.

She proceeded to wrap the cricket like a mummy in record time. Her long legs were working over time as she spun him into a cocoon. She hovered over her prey as he sat lifeless, and I was pleased to be able to help her out, following her web building.

At the nights end, she thanked me. I could see, in her seventeen eyes, her gratefulness in my assisting her with dinner. In the morning she was gone but at least her tummy was full. If she returns tonight, I will once again help her out with dinner plans. We have plenty of crickets to spare.

Comments

Cheri said…
Thanks for stopping in and commenting on my blog last week. I'm a little behind on email... You know, the scrap book and all...

I too appreciate spiders. Not that I openly invite them into my house, but if they're quiet and eat the bugs like they're supposed to, well, I'm all for them visiting!