(no subject)
Lisa thinks I'm a whackjob (although thankfully in an endearing way :) in regards to my obsessive fascination with spiders and bats, so I have to post this here.
I've made posts in the past about these Garden Orb Weaver spiders that show up for the tail end of summer, crafting these often huge and brilliant Charlotte-style webs (minus any words or messages from what I can tell so far;) in various and sometimes surprising locations around the yard and house exterior (and once, some 6 or so years ago, smack in the middle of my living room).
I'm always super excited for them to show up every year - for the chance to watch them methodically weave their food trap every evening right about dusk and sit stoicly smack in the middle waiting for dinner, to make my own occasional contributions by tossing mosquitoes or moths into the web, to observe how quick work is made of packaging up the unfortunate insects trapped therein, to catch one pulling in the lines of her web the next morning and tucking up into a crack to sleep for the day.
So yes, I'm ridiculously sentimental and in awe of my resident Orb Weaver spiders (which isn't to say that I'm not ridiculously and completely arachnophobic about the usual suspect arachnids that persist in skulking and stalking their creepy bastard selves around my house against my wishes).
Yesterday I had my fondness for these graceful deliberate arachnids boosted by at least an order of magnitude. Jumping back to Thursday afternoon, I was futzing around on the deck and noticed an Orb Weaver hanging haphazardly from the bottom of the table, looking injured and sort of macked up. So I grabbed a City Pages to catch it up with, then put it up on top of the table - where I saw that its dilemma was that it had only 4 legs - all 4 legs on the one side of the body just weren't there.
Couldn't figure that it had managed to make it to arachnid-adulthood without them (tho it was a smaller than the usual adults), but figured the legs must've recently gotten whacked off in some unfortunate accident/encounter. So it hobble-crawled across the top of the table, where I figured it would hole up until it just died of hunger.
Next morning - when I came out to feed Dax, I saw the most brilliant ghetto-looking web between the legs of the table, with my 4-legged friend perched right in the middle. The web had all these crazy angles to it, like a drunken spider had made it with its eyes closed, but it was functional and solid. I just had to laugh in total appreciation - leave it to nature to allow a developmentally disabled spider enough wherewithall to still manage to build webs and survive, I'm hella impressed :).
I've made posts in the past about these Garden Orb Weaver spiders that show up for the tail end of summer, crafting these often huge and brilliant Charlotte-style webs (minus any words or messages from what I can tell so far;) in various and sometimes surprising locations around the yard and house exterior (and once, some 6 or so years ago, smack in the middle of my living room).
I'm always super excited for them to show up every year - for the chance to watch them methodically weave their food trap every evening right about dusk and sit stoicly smack in the middle waiting for dinner, to make my own occasional contributions by tossing mosquitoes or moths into the web, to observe how quick work is made of packaging up the unfortunate insects trapped therein, to catch one pulling in the lines of her web the next morning and tucking up into a crack to sleep for the day.
So yes, I'm ridiculously sentimental and in awe of my resident Orb Weaver spiders (which isn't to say that I'm not ridiculously and completely arachnophobic about the usual suspect arachnids that persist in skulking and stalking their creepy bastard selves around my house against my wishes).
Yesterday I had my fondness for these graceful deliberate arachnids boosted by at least an order of magnitude. Jumping back to Thursday afternoon, I was futzing around on the deck and noticed an Orb Weaver hanging haphazardly from the bottom of the table, looking injured and sort of macked up. So I grabbed a City Pages to catch it up with, then put it up on top of the table - where I saw that its dilemma was that it had only 4 legs - all 4 legs on the one side of the body just weren't there.
Couldn't figure that it had managed to make it to arachnid-adulthood without them (tho it was a smaller than the usual adults), but figured the legs must've recently gotten whacked off in some unfortunate accident/encounter. So it hobble-crawled across the top of the table, where I figured it would hole up until it just died of hunger.
Next morning - when I came out to feed Dax, I saw the most brilliant ghetto-looking web between the legs of the table, with my 4-legged friend perched right in the middle. The web had all these crazy angles to it, like a drunken spider had made it with its eyes closed, but it was functional and solid. I just had to laugh in total appreciation - leave it to nature to allow a developmentally disabled spider enough wherewithall to still manage to build webs and survive, I'm hella impressed :).