Fifty Shades Freed

Sat down with early-morning tea and saw tiny young hatchling (because his tail is blue) five-lined skink trapped in a web spun beneath the picnic table, and its spider approaching to suck his blood. Skink was so tightly wrapped and limp that I thought him dead already, and turned away because I didn't want to watch, but then I saw him wiggle. Breaking the web, I carried the skink outside and urged him to run and hide, but spiderwebbing had bound his back legs to his body, and the same with his tail, depriving him of his rudder and best weapon. He didn't move. I thought him dead again and was sorry I had interfered with the spider's meal. He was still so pretty I wanted to take his photo. Then he struggled: Alive!

Using a round toothpick I picked apart the webbing, cotton-candy sticky. I plucked it off his shivering whip of a body, and he ran. And he will never stay out past curfew again!

Daddy or Not?

Y'see, kids, there are two kinds of Daddy Long Legs. The real Daddy Long Legs usually marries a plant, or maybe it just rents the plant for the summer and makes a web and sits in it just waiting to eat aphids and cutworms and whatnot that'd attack the plant, so they work together. Now this particular Daddy in the photo fell in love with the screen on my porch, and hung there sunning, looking just like a scarab except with beautiful legs, one (at the 7 o'clock position) way longer than the others. Its clinging so close to home, and its one-piece (fused) body makes me think it's the kind of Daddy Long Legs that although it's an arachnid, is not a true spider or Daddy Long Legs at all, but one of those "harvesters" you usually see indoors, like, in your bathroom, and who is your best friend if you don't like bugs or house spiders. I think it's a harvester because harvesters don't spin webs; this one is using a web that was pre-made. Unlike true spiders, the harvester has only two eyes and the males have a male reproductive organ (so they say). Or this could be a brown recluse spider. It's the right color, but they don't care for sun...You got that all down?

Along Came an Argiope

Lives in a web attached to the pump house, and has resided there for 4 days now, plump and happy, in a web measuring 24 inches across. The male makes the zigzag part of the web, the female the rest. Called a Black and Yellow Argiope, Argiope aurantia, it is common and harmless but about 3 inches long and is dressed to the nines.

Drama on the Kitchen Floor

The occasional roach comes out of the drain here, but this morning I watched one of 'em get trapped-and-wrapped by a hungry spider, deep in a corner of the kitchen where I don't clean much. The drama went: Spider saw the roach, dropped down and stung or bit it so that the roach flipped on its back. Spider climbed on up, dropped down again and strung up the roach so it was suspended in the air, and then spun it, roping it tightly round the middle with filament. She lowered her prey to the floor after it was all tied up. The photo shows her putting on the finishing touches. The roach expired shortly afterward, and the spider had breakfast.