The Mama Spider that Trained Me, or Extreme Boredom Makes People Stranger than Normal

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

After dinner, I like to go out on my porch and smoke. This happens about the same time every day. While recreating, I fuss with my plants.

I get offended when grasshoppers are on my porch, eating my plants, so I wack them.

One day, I was cleaning up a still twitching body and noticed that a spider had made a funnel web between the porch and the house. I like spiders, and was bored, so dropped the grasshopper on the web and then found a slender twig and twitched strands of web. Nothing happened right away, so I went off to do other things. Half an hour or so later, I looked at the web again and saw that the grasshopper was webbed. Cool.

I kept dropping grasshoppers in the web and learned that spiders are slobs. She would drag the grasshopper deeper into the tunnel, between the floating deck and the house, suck the juice out of it and toss the body out on the deck a day later.

As time passed, I also noticed that I could see her peeking out of her tunnel when I was getting close to the web. She would scamper out as soon as I dropped the body, bite it, spin around it for a minute and then start dragging it home.

As time passed and the boredom intensified, I started smoking during the day. This meant that spider got fed several times a day. She learned the difference between hubs and I, probably by the vibrations on the wood, and never bothered to climb her tunnel when she heard him.

Its possible that she’s fat, but I think that she was sharing some grasshopper blood with a friend and has ended up preggy.

I’m also wondering if she is going to send her babies out into the world or if I am going to be posting about feeding a thousand spiders next year.

2

If you neglect to feed her, she can write “Some grasshoppers” in her web for you.

3

Keep us posted. I used to read about the pigeons Siam Sam looked after, and miss the stories.

When I was a child my extended family used to have reunions in shelter houses out by a nearby lake. After dard the bathrooms were lit up and we kids would catch small moths we called millers(less than the size of a quarter) and toss them into the spider webs in the corner of the overhangs outside the bathrooms. We’d see the spider come running.

4

@JaneDoe42
Precisely who are you averring is strange? People who write about spiders or people who read what is written about said spiders?

5

People who are bored enough to feed feral spiders like she feeds stray cats. Not that feral cats have any more respect for housekeeping than spiders…

Yanno, Baker, you sound like my sorta person :slight_smile:

6

Years ago we had a garden spider take up residence right outside the front door where I worked. We named her Elvira. We put up a sign that declared the area the Garden Spider Protected Habitat to keep her safe. We fed her all kinds of insects and she got really big. She eventually mated (and then killed him) but she hid the egg sack so we never saw any babies. She lived for several months. This is not the best picture I have of her but it’s one of the few I can find right now.

Imgur

7

When I was a kid, a big hairy wolf spider built a web right outside my bedroom window. I threw a grasshopper on the web, then quickly ran inside to observe. I had a nature doc-quality view inches away. The spider ran up to the grasshopper and quickly jumped back several times, as if to judge how much fight the grasshopper had in it. when the spider was satisfied it was immobile, it sank its fangs in deep.

Another time as a kid I held up a live grasshopper to a praying mantis. It instantly grabbed the grasshopper horizontally in its vice-like claws and started munching on it like it was corn on the cob.

Nature is straight-up cold blooded. It’s been years since I murdered any grasshoppers by proxy, so hopefully the grasshopper gods have forgiven me.

8

Don’t worry about angering the grasshopper gods; grasshoppers are lazy jerks who sing and play all Summer instead of gathering grain and then, when the snows come, they go whining and begging to the ants. They deserve what they get.

9

Arachnia! We found her! After all these years. Now we can get our revenge for our ancestor’s death!

10

Totally agree that grasshoppers are total jerks, they eat my plants and spoil my fruit. I tend to leave them alone in the yard because I don’t put poison in my food, but if they offend me mightily if they are on my patio, eating my pretty flowers. Thank goodness for Arachnia.

Charlotte is HUGE, I’m amazed she can still squeeze herself back into her tunnel. Her appetite hasn’t been very good today, she webbed the 4 offerings I gave her, but only produced 1 desiccated body in exchange.

11

Charlotte is no longer pregnant! I can’t find the egg sack, I think she stashed it safely between the house and the porch. This is so exciting!

12

I hear she’s naming the firstborn after you!

13

How’s she going to be able to tell which one is her firstborn, when all 100-200 of them will swarm out at once? According to google, they will disperse by making little balloons and fly away. How is that going to happen when they are in that half inch spot at the back of the porch? Am I going to need to start murdering mass amounts of insects to feed them all?

Oh, the worries of a new grandmother!

14

There was a giant spider who set up shop by our back door in Texas that I named Queenie, and regularly fed tasty bugs.

I like to think that her descendants have a tiny portrait of me hanging on the wall, deep in their webs.

15

Just think of the testaments they will each submit for your eulogy. :spider: :spider_web: :spider: