FOWC with Fandango — Spider
I have always had a deep fear of spiders which wasn’t improved when Garry got bitten by a brown recluse and spent a month on antibiotics — and then I discovered we have wolf spiders all over our woods.
Our own wolf spider and he is bigger than he looks!
Spiders love our front door. No matter how many times you sweep it clear, the spiders and their webs are back in less than 24 hours. I have developed a very ambiguous set of emotions about them, too. I’m not less afraid of them …. but I also recognize that they eat other bugs that I hate even more than spiders. Okay, the gigantic black wolf spider on my back door — that was war. But he was the size of a dessert dish and I tried knocking him down to the deck, so he had three chances to run for the woods before I brought out the spider spray. And they aren’t poisonous. Just HUGE.
Our own personal Gypsy Moth caterpillars
But they eat other insects and lord knows we have plenty of bugs for them to gorge on. Just please, not in my house. Stay outside. I can cope with outdoor bugs. Just not in my house.
More ot those hideous caterpillars
We have also conquered the army of carpenter ants who were trying to take over the house and this year, finally no Gypsy Moth caterpillars.
I’m making peace — or trying to make peace — with the multi-legged universe of insects that surrounds us. I could do without the poisonous mosquitoes, though. They make me twitch.
Eastern Equine Encephalitis mosquito – Massachusetts variety
I fell in love with Blue Jays when I discovered they are one of the ONLY birds that really love eating Gypsy Moth caterpillars. May man of them come and live in our woods. We need you! Come home!
And I’m still waiting for the return of the bats. One bat eats more than double his weight in mosquitoes every night.
Welcome, Blue Jay!
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Categories: #animals, #Photography, climate change, Marilyn Armstrong
SERENDIPITY - SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
That is a beautiful looking spider… and those blue jays… wow! they’re the most beautiful birds. Our European jays are very different birds. Shy. And mismatched, a bit of this, a bit of that, and only the tiniest bit of vivid blue on the wings…
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This year, we had a lot of blue jays, but they seem to have contracted some kind of illness along with the robins and a few other birds. Hopefully they will (again) rebound. The weather has been so wet, there have been a lot of insects and fungus diseases. I know there are some still out there because we can hear them calling to each other, but we have not seen them in several weeks. They ARE beautiful.
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That wolf spider is one big, ugly, scary beast.
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Yes, and I think she was looking for a place to put her eggs. I can cope with a lotta stuff, but a spider that big is terrifying.
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We have BIG bugs out here in the west, and sometimes they get into the house. Fortunately we also have geckos, a bug loving lizard that also get into the house. A couple of my friends, on seeing a gecko in the house, have reeled in horror. I understand this as lizards can look very intimidating at times, even little ones. However, I’ve learned to love the little monsters as they tend to keep my house pretty bug-free. I even have a memorial lizard skeleton from one of my little friends that got caught in my back door, when I was closing it.., he perished horribly. I felt really bad, but I never saw him. I found him while replacing that door and named him “George.” He now occupies a special place on my kitchen counter, on the “Banana Preserver” built for me by a human friend. Two petrified bananas (10-15 yrs old) live there, so George has good company. All this to say that nature has a way to balance things, and bugs are part of the formula.
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Geckos are wonderful bug killers. Along with bats … AND those huge spiders. I can deal with the lizards (we have different geckos, but they are still geckos) and I really liked the bats, but the bats died in an epidemic brought over from Europe by an unsanitary spelunker and they haven’t come back. We don’t have a LOT of geckos and all winter, they live between the rocks in our stone fences. But those huge spiders totally creep me out.
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We are just a visitor in their world
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BIG visitors. The thing is, the wolf spiders — and there are a lot of them. They live all over North America from California through the Southwest and up through New England into Canada. They don’t live in houses. They build little houses and hunker down in them waiting for something edible to wander by. What it was doing on my screen … on the second floor … is baffling. She didn’t belong there. She was definitely very lost.
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I was wondering if you would venture to take a photo of a spider and even talk about them as I know they are not your friends. Some good captures there.
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That huge (it really was VERY big — the biggest spider I’ve ever seen that was alive!) spider didn’t seem to understand that through my terror, I was really trying to give him a break. I kept knocking him off the screen and back to the deck with a soto voce “Please, go home!” But he kept coming back. I couldn’t figure out why, either. Those wolf spiders usually stay in their little houses in the woods where they sit and wait for a victim to drop by. This one kept coming back. Did he want to be my friend? By his fourth return, it was (from my side) war and I brought out the weaponry, but I really tried.
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Perhaps he or she was the re-incarnation of someone you once knew.
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Lord, I hope not!
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Oh can I ever relate.
But like you, I have tried to “make peace”. Just this morning, I walked into a giant web, MY least favorite thing!!! Still creeped out by it!!
Did you ever read this post?
https://theseekersdungeon.com/2015/11/20/walking-with-intention-day-20-by-kathie-arcide/
(Don’t mean that as a shameless plug but rather big time empathy!!)
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Went back and reread the piece. I know I read it before because my comment is in the middle of the comments, but I left another one anyway.
I hate webs. I never know what came with it or what “it” is doing or where “it” is!
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Thanks Marilyn
I feel fully empathized with.
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