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Jun. 9, 2008
A new friend
For some reason, lately I have a habit of putting large spiders in jars to keep on my desk for days on end, for observation. A few weeks ago it was a massive wolf spider who ate pretty much everything I threw in the jar, although, like the Kat, he did prefer his "food to MOVE." I let him go when he appeared less than vigorous. I didn't want him to die in my care. I turned him loose in a brushy area with lots of dead leaves on the ground (the sort of thing wolf spiders like, according to my research)
Now I have some sort of brown house spider. I found it creeping (quite quickly!) along the top edge of the shower curtain while one of the boys was inside. The boy didn't know the spider was there, thank goodness. I popped it into a quart mason jar and proceeded to watch.
When I caught the spider its body was probably an inch long. The abdomen was massive, easily twice the length of its thorax and probably 5 times the volume. We were intrigued that the spider started to spin a bit of a web almost immediately. It was a tiny, erratic kind of web, about 4 inches across (the spider is probably 2 inches when its legs are at rest) There was a good reason for that massive abdomen- Friday, the day after I caught it, a big white egg sac appeared under it!! She (I assume now that it's a "she") was sitting on the little web with the sac under her abdomen, attached to her by a tiny bit of thread.
This morning I noticed that the web now has a much denser area directly in front of and below the spider. It looks a bit like fusible web used for crafting (like Stitch Witchery) and is about 2 inches wide by 3 inches long. I am really eager to see what happens with these eggs. I would like to know what kind of spider this is but she's so very ordinary and without unusual markings that I haven't even tried WhatsThatBug.com or any of the usual bug-indentification sites. (Yes, I know that spiders are not bugs, but "bugs" just works) |
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