Breaking Cat News by Georgia Dunn for April 21, 2024

Don’t forget to look for their tiny scaffolding too. Just don’t report them for not having a building permit! Nobody likes a tattletale.

Sunday Funday

It starts with a spider in a hardhat, joined by five more wearing a Stetson, a feathered headdress, police helmet, biker jacket, and sailor cap. Would really love to see them all lined up and sing a thrilling rendition of YMCA!

Yet another reason to make banana bread as soon as possible, preferably as soon as you get the bananas home from the store.

Of course Burt. As the old saying goes: “Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like bananas.”

Aristotle’s occasional scientific errors are nothing compared to his invention of the science of logic and his general approach that knowledge should be based on observation of the world.

Now I’m thinking of itsy bitsy Tommy-baums.

They’ve been in my kitchen, clearly.

Fruit flies are right up there with ticks and fleas as my least favorite creatures.

I haven’t yet managed to catch Allyson wearing her hat, but she’s so fast (thus her name) she might have dashed past me wearing it and I didn’t notice.

Yup. It’s usually bananas. They go off quickly. When your apple liquefies, it’s really been there too long…

We have an open compost container on the counter which usually goes out daily. (So good for the vegetable garden!) In Winter this is not a problem. In Summer it starts a new ecosystem every day. The spiders do a really good job of keeping the traffic light. I do, however, have to disagree with Burt’s characterization of them as tidy – they stay busy and do good work but I wish they put the carcasaes in the compost instead of leaving them scattered around wherever they happened to be.

I used to have one in my kitchen I called Chloe. She had picked out an unobtrusive corner so I just decided to leave her to it, and even went so far as to be careful opening and closing cabinets nearby because if she was awake when an air current hit it she’d startle.

Only once did I have to trim the web back a bit because she’d gotten a little enthusiastic at expanding her territory. Consider how much bigger she was at that point than when I first saw her I knew she wasn’t starving (that extra mass had to be coming from somewhere).

My relationship wasn’t quite as close with the ones outside my Mom’s apartment. They used to cower in terror in the spring when the hummingbirds would show up, stealing swaths of silk for use in building their own nests.

That’s not a sp … Naaah. Too easy.

The reason I stop buying bananas. I never knew about the horror stories about spiders and bananas until I read a few horror stories about them. I’m sorry, NO, NO…….!

It’s only ever been peaches for me; never, ever bananas. (It wouldn’t have been bananas, of any sort, for Aristotle, either.)♥

Pucky with a pointer! But who did the artwork for the broadcast today? Sophie?

Meanwhile, Back on the Nile

At the Castle Tincan

Guard: Welcome to the castle, noble visitors. What brings you to Tincan?

Iggy: We bring indestructible jewels to fulfill the quest for the Holy Grill.

Guard: What is your name?

Iggy: I am called Ignatius Shipwright.

Guard: And what is your favorite color?

Iggy: I like so many, but I would say the blue, the color of the sky and ocean.

Guard: You may pass.

All of them enter safely

Guard: Your Majesty, I present to you Ignatius Shipwright, called Iggy, Iron Glove Chipmunk, Sue Chef, and the Artisans Sophititti and Adoble Style.

Introductions Continue

King Arturo: Welcome, Noble Visitors. I understand you are here to help in the quest for the Holy Grill.

Iggy: That is so, Your Majesty. We have jewels created by that renowned crafts elf, Fe-Anaro.

Sue Chef: And I am here to learn to create Double Down cheese.

King Arturo: And I am honoured to greet the Royal Procurers of Egypt.

Alice-Ata: The honour is ours, Your Majesty. We are interested in All Things Cheese.

Queen Gwen: Come, noble chefs and Procurers. I will take you to the kitchen.

(Continued Below)

Good timing, since I’m trying to convince my kitchen spider that he has nothing to fear from me now.

And I’m sorry, but I still think Aristotle was right, and dead flesh turns into maggots.

Whaaat? No ways. Them pesky spiders can falls into your foods and dreenks and contaminates it. If yours keetchen full o bugs or spiders then it notheeng but a feelthy keetchen. First them mangy mice contaminating the foods and now thees. Geeeez!

I have several such housemates. Live and let live I say!

Two things: I have a meme I use occasionally in the spring for my laptop background that has a picture of a spider and it says “What if that spider you killed had spent his whole life thinking you were his roommate?” I never kill them. Ever. Two; we have people on our neighborhood app who will sometimes post a picture and type in all caps of course, WHATHEHISTHAT??? and it’s a picture of a rather large spider that’s living in their house. The usual horrible answers are always given, but I always ask them…looking at the size of that spider, what do you think he’s eating that’s gotten him that big and wouldn’t you rather he’s eating those bugs than leaving THEM in your house? Keep the spider! But they never listen…

I have them in my bay window taking care if the pests in my plants.

We have one that has setup some cones in the bathroom :)

Spiders are my nemesis.

How informative! Not enough to make spiders less scary, but now I know where all those tiny safety cones come from!

Our basement spiders are only allowed to stay, in the closet, where the electrical panel, and water meter are. They pay their rent by taking out crickets and any other insects, stupid enough to crawl in!

Spiders, man. Spiders, man. They can do what spiders can.

Huh, for me it’s not the bananas themselves that attracts the fruit flies, its whatever the parts of any given fruit you don’t use that get left in the kitchen trash can for too long.

I remember the idea from middle school science class. Aristotle was brilliant. Wrong about so many things, but that fed the fire of curiosity for scientists that came after him. All Hail the first, and tragically wrong! LOL Louis Pasteur disproved him by putting the flesh in an open container, and one that was closed. And we all know how that ended. And he wasn’t wrong about everything. It’s just that he was so brilliant no one dared challenge his ideas then. Thankfully, there were people after him who did.

Not quite understanding the one who’s the spinner, would be holding a spin sign, but ok. How’s he gonna work with a sign in his hand ? It’s like co-workers holding their phones all day.

Holly Bear makes it her life mission to dispatch, with extreme prejudice, any spider in the house. She will literally watch one up on the ceiling the whole day, waiting for her chance.

I’d love to see our kitchen wolf spiders wearing little hard hats and setting out tiny traffic cones.

I don’t want fruit flies or spiders around. They can just stay outside.

I have arachnophobia. I am terrified of the critters, and am unduly pleased that the cats keep them in check.

O.T. Spring

Yeah, sorry, any spider I find in my apartment has to go. I’m not waking up in the middle of the night with one of them on my face.

Come back little spider

And let me be your friend

I promise that I won’t squish you

So let me make amends

No two of you are alike

So you’re a master of disguise

You’re sort of like mini-ninjas,

Or very tiny spies

Some people say youre creepy

’Cause six is too many eyes

But I think you’re really nice

Because you eat up all the flies

You’re really very helpful

You eat up all the bugs

But people still might squish you

Instead of give you hugs

So beware, eight legged friends

Of people who don’t like you

You’re absolutely inimitable,

There’s no one else quite like you!

I have heard tell, FWIW, that yer house or basement spider is extremely likely to have spent all its life (so far) inside your house. So putting it outside in the cruel cold (or hot) world is not doing it any favors.

Except for Black Widow and Brown Recluse Fiddle spiders

All this talk has Ziggy Stardust playing in my head on a loop now.

One of the nice things about my favorite kitchen spider, the spitting spider, is that not only can they not even bite you if they wanted to, they eat other venomous spiders. Such as brown recluses, which are rampant in my area. My mom made the mistake of having her house sprayed for spiders years ago. It killed everything BUT the brown recluses and now there is a recluse in every shoe box, drawer, box of Christmas ornaments, stuck in the bathtub for some reason, in the kitchen cabinet under one of the glasses. It’s horrifying and I hate sleeping out there in a folding bed which has been proven to have brown recluses in it. My husband and I bring a vacuum and spider hunt for an hour before we rest at night. I don’t know what the solution is to restore a healthy home ecosystem after you’ve poisoned all the beneficial spiders.

For decades now, I’ve had a small white spider residing in the space between my bathroom “medicine cabinet” and the wall in which it is set. My mom named it “Horatio.” I don’t remember what year that was, but all white bathroom spiders since have been Horatio. So far, this year’s Horatio has yet to appear.

I was teaching high school at the time. One of the girls shrieked because a spider had repelled down from the ceiling of the classroom and landed on her desk. One of the boys was going to smash it, so I called out "Don’t kill it. It might be one of Horatio’s siblings. Of course they wanted to know who Horatio was, so I told them it was my pet spider. I’m not sure they believed me, but at least I was able to get it into the lid of my thermos and safely out the window.

A few weeks later, I had brought my mom to the spring concert. One of the students who had been in that class asked my mom who Horatio was. She smiled and said, “Our pet spider, of course.” Finally they believed me.

One day I watched my outdoor tenant small spider give birth in her web. Out came hundreds of salt -grain-sized babies. It was fascinating.

Not a fan of spiders in the house. Our house is fairly tight, now, so we get fewer pests and fewer spiders inside. This is fine, as I seem to be sensitive to spider bites. Spiders inside, if catchable, are relocated outside.

All bets are off, however, if they start wrapping food from the refrigerator.

Aw, the little hard hat. How Georgia manages to make even spiders cute…. Pure magic <3

“Li’l Hard Hat” and tiny safety cones. Too funny!

But many people who see spiders can get very loud.

Spiders are our friends.

“We all get where Aristotle was coming from, right?” Is my new must-work-into-conversation BCN phrase! (Right on Puck!)

I used to have a spider who spun their web down at floor level. I left it undisturbed because I figured that any spider that is scared of heights is my spiritual kin.

Time flies like the wind, but fruit flies like bananas

That’s. So. Cute!

Such a nice little kitchen ecosystem.

I once worked on the top floor of a building (11 stories) in which small spiders would sometimes rappel down from the ceiling tiles. This freaked out an arachniphobic coworker.

I thought he’d find it comforting to know that spiders are carnivores and he should be more worried about whatever it was they were finding to eat up there. Strangely, this information did not ease his fears. Go figure.

I’m in favor of anything that eats bugs, especially when they move in with hard hats, octagonal signs, and traffic cones.

I’ve always left the daddy longlegs alone. They are my house spiders. I’ve had one or two around since I was a child of 4 or 5. Not too crazy about the rest of the tribes, my husband nearly lost his arm after getting bitten by an unknown spider while working in the yard. The bite got infected and well, we won’t go there, let’s just say other than daddy long legs I tend to help them outside and yell “And stay out!” while slamming the door.

This one REALLY speaks to my heart!

Also they never ask to borrow your clothes or your car!

A kitchen spider IS an unwanted pest!

No, those aren’t Halloween decorations left up too long.

Was I the only one looking for the July Bug in the Aristotle picture? Must not’ve been drawn by the faithful Guinea Pig.

Elvis, a correction: spiders’ silk glands are in their abdomens, and the silk emerges from spinnerets at the back of the abdomen. You might be thinking of cribellate spiders, which do have a “comb” on the fourth leg that unfurls the silk from a special organ on the abdomen called the cribellum. Otherwise, great spidery reporting!