This is the kind of spider that nightmares are made of. There were not one, but three, such spiders at our brunch date on the homestead yesterday morning (don't worry dear neighbor, it was far, far away from our dusty building).We ate breakfast on the other side of the screened in porch from the venom trifecta. Jo tried to convince me that they were completely harmless, but really, when they're that large, boldly marked (poison!), and have a web that's at least 2 feet tall, it doesn't matter how many factoids you throw at me.
The other brunch-goers decided to lure an insect into the web of the largest spider (pictured everywhere in this post) while I went to the bathroom. I opened the porch door to find Jo standing in the yard holding a glass and waving a piece of cardboard around. There was cheering (by all but me) when she succeeded in whisking a honeybee into the web. The spider immediately swooped over and wrapped the bee in a thick husk of silk and returned to its perch in the middle of the web.
The peanut gallery was sufficiently repulsed, but they were sad that the show ended so quickly. What about the blood sucking?? We didn't have to wait very long before the she-dracula retrieved its victim and took it back to the middle of the net for a nice long drink (larger version here).
3 comments:
you're such a weenie. and an fyi, i think you have to be logged in to look at the large versions of pictures on flickr.
Oh, dios mio, THANK YOU for specifying that it does not exist at the Walt. Because that was my first thought, and that would definitely, definitely necessitate moving.
Hmmmm...what are the karmic implications, here? Added points on behalf of the spider, subtracted on behalf of the bee. I guess you break even. :)
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