Not my favorite early morning sight . . .

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I got up this morning, and began stumbling around my room in my usual AM stupor. I opened my underwear drawer and rummaged around for some foundation garments.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed some motion. At first I thought it was a bit of dust or fluff, but kept moving rather than settling. A closer look revealed something very similar to this

No, it’s not a spider with a huge, spherical, bulgy head (disturbing as that would be.)

It is a daddy-longlegs spider (a.k.a. cellar spider, a.k.a. Pholcus phalangioides), and it is carrying an egg sac.

In my underwear drawer.

Now, contrary to widespread belief, the daddy-longlegs spider is not poisonous and does not bite humans and is therefore not at all dangerous. I got to watch one set up housekeeping in a corner of our bathroom, and it was really fascinating. Its immature offspring are almost cute, just teeny tiny puffs of legs.

Which doesn’t necessarily mean I want one having a bajillion babies in my underwear drawer.

I tried to gently herd her out of the drawer, which of course scared the bejeezus out of her and caused her to go to ground, i.e. to run like hell for the deepest darkest cranny she could find.

Oh, well, I thought, I needed to straighten up the drawer anyway. So I started removing items one by one, shaking them out carefully, folding them, and piling them on the bed.

Eventually the spider resurfaced, with the egg sac, thank goodness. Ha ha! I thought. Oh, crap! I thought. Because it hadn’t occurred to me (my brain was still arguing in favor of leaving Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom to return to the spider-free comfort of my bed) that I should probably take the drawer out of the dresser before finding the spider.

She dashed again for darkness, shelter, and security: up and over the back of the underwear drawer, and into the recesses of the dresser. She wasn’t in the next drawer down (my sweater drawer) and I decided that, as long as she wasn’t in the underwear drawer, I’d declare victory and go brush my teeth.

So I have a very tidy underwear drawer, and a spider with a ball of spider eggs somewhere in my dresser.

2

Erm, if a new silky sweater turns up in your sweater drawer…DO NOT TRY IT ON!!! :eek:

3

The moral of this story would seem to be when you see spiders in the bathroom, instead of just admiring them some other action might be called for.

Not that they do not have admirable traits, but perhaps they should be observed from the out doors, lest they decide to purchase a lovely condo in your underwear drawer.

Just a thought.

4

Could have been worse.

Must be spider season as a trend appears to be forming.

5

So, what you’re saying is that your underwear drawer is close to having cobwebs in it? That’s not something I’d want to advertise. :slight_smile:

6

I’d rather have spiders in my house (and, yes, occasionally in my underwear drawer) than bugs. Spiders are nature’s way of concentrating household biomass. :slight_smile: I’m hoping she’ll decide that the dresser is to noisy and move out before they hatch.

7

We get a lot of those. Hassling them to make them to that spinny thing in their web is a prime source of entertainment. (Well, on the last day before payday, anyway.)

I read somewhere that they primarily eat spiders, which gave me this vision of a long cycle of daddy long legs birthing and eating each other until there was only one uber-spider left.

8

Only a daddy longlegs isn’t actually a spider, right? Or am I mistaken?

9

You’re probably thinking of these:

http://www.kendall-bioresearch.co.uk/harvestmen.htm
There is also a true spider called a daddy long legs, which is the one in Podkayne’s unmentionables.

10

female cellar spider