B.C. by Mastroianni and Hart for July 03, 2020

“As God is my witness, I didn’t know spiders could fly!”

That was one! One from a whole nest of freshly hatched spiders! And it flew away! Think on all its brothers and sisters who stuck around! :)

They call it ballooning; you can read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballooning_(spider)

They can go quite far, they are found out at sea, far from land.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v2exWrsGOc

Before you jump in fright at a spider take time to watch it hunt its prey. We had a little brown house spider in our kitchen. She had been there for a few days and had spun her web in a corner where I watched her while I washed the dishes. A medium sized cockroach crept out of a crack in the plaster and the little spider jumped on the cockroach, bit it and paralysed it with her nerve venom. She then dragged it up to her web and proceeded to tie the cockroach up with the thread that she was spinning. Hubby and I watched in fascination while she tied up the cockroach so that it couldn’t escape when the nerve poison wore off. She dragged it up the rest of the way to the nest at the centre of her web then proceeded to lay her eggs around the cockroach. It was an impressive sight because the spider was half the size of the cockroach. Every day the little spider did her housekeeping, keeping the web clean and and throwing out any unwanted bits and pieces. Sadly about two weeks later a praying mantis jumped on the little spider and had her for breakfast. It was an excellent lesson on the food chain and the survival of the fittest.

It is interesting to see the air above the Oklahoma countryside filled with flying.gliding spiders.

Sure, go ahead; you can run, but you can’t hide!

Why is arachnophobia so widespread?

A friend was into buying exotic spiders from a pet store. I told him he could find them cheaper on the web.

What is that? A half inflated balloon with a black ribbon tied on its end?

I’ve seen about anything, but I have never seen a spider fly.

Do you sleep at night or lie there thinking about bugs crawling all over your body?

They don’t fly any more than squirrels or fish.

Flying spiders, phfft! Flying snakes, now that is something else.

Charlotte’s babies……Recently neighbors and I were talking outside and a couple spiders flew around us. One landed on my friend. It is weird to see though… nature is fascinating When you take time to appreciate it.

Spiders, like snakes and bats, get really bad press. Mostly, I think they’re fascinating creatures. Those plate-sized ones in Australia, however, DO give me pause.

They’re also on the web…..LOL

Spiders live on glaciers too.

Not much fun when they flock, your on your bike pedaling hard, and get a mouthful.

Well, if you like spiders, you might want to read Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time, which features “uplifted” (made intelligent) spiders on another planet. It is quite fascinating and very well written.

The first Charlotte!

Well, wind assisted flying. In other words it’s gone with the wind.

That’s the best thing about having real winters, it’s nice break from the bugs.

I’m jealous. I wish I could spin a web and float on out of here!

At least they lived in a time that could assume they would HAVE glaciers, us not so much longer. Our grand children will be saying ‘What were glaciers?’

Good grief! Hasn’t anybody seen (or read) Charlotte’s Web? It’s a good read and loaded with entertaining satire