Since you've been gone...

One thing about the world: it keeps to a tight schedule. It doesn't put its plans on hold when you have your nose buried so deep in your new job you don't have as much time and energy as you normally do to document it on your blog. Flowers don't wait for the weekend to bloom so that you'll have time to photograph them. Ducklings at the local pond don't slow their growth in hopes that you'll have the chance to come by and see them while they are in their super cute phase. Nope, not a chance.

I seem to have a lot of things swirling around in my head these days. Lately, while sitting on the tube or walking on the street or lying in bed at night, I notice that my brow is deeply furrowed for no apparent reason. I like my job, I guess I just don't always like working. It gets in the way. There have been dozens of times over the past few weeks where I've seen something beautiful, or something interesting has happened to me, and I've thought about what a good blog post it would be. And then I get busy and nothing comes of it.

So, here's my attempt to recap 5 notable things from last two weeks:

1. Spiders are back. Everywhere. To Scott's dismay, the whole country seems to be, well, crawling with them.

I was waiting on the train platform the other morning going through my wallet to weed out old receipts, and underneath my wallet I was holding, in the same hand, a rolled up New Yorker. In the short time it took me to pull out all the old receipts and toss them into the trash bin, I noticed a spider had begun spinning a web in the 3 inch space between the magazine and my wallet!

It inspired me to take a tour of my garden to try to document some of them [click photos for larger versions]:



1a. Remember that nursery web spider that beat the glass with his fangs when I trapped him last summer? I found a new one who lives in the rolled up end of one of our rugs in the dining room. I watched it leap onto a smaller spider and ominously drag it into its dark, hidden lair. It has been very difficult to photograph because every time I notice it outside the rug and try to approach, it scurries back inside.


1b. A number of spiders have taken up residence behind our sideview mirrors again. I think that they must do it because the mirrors reflect light from our porch lamp at night, which attracts bugs. Smart spiders.

2. The aforementioned flowers are blooming (from our garden):



3. We have discovered a colony of bumble bees living under our lawn. They come and go out of a small hole in the grass. I watched one bumble bee chewing the blades of grass to keep the hole tidy and unobstructed. They are very fast little bees, and this is the best I could do to capture their high-speed comings and goings.


4. Though it's true that a growing duckling or gosling waits for no one, we have managed to spend some time at the local pond in the past few weekends observing their downy cuteness.

The park sells little bags of grain that you can feed them. Some will eat out of your hand. This little flock of older ducklings descended on me voraciously.
Only one of the ducklings was brave enough to feed from my hand (the alpha duckling?) while the rest just quacked at me urgently until I threw some food their way. The mother watched me very closely to be sure I didn't try anything funny with her children, and she quacked disapprovingly when one of the ducklings first started feeding from my hand. Isn't she pretty?
Our Disney-esque afternoon with cute animal babies was shattered when we noticed one little yellow gosling floating face down in the pond. Scott convinced me it was irrational to ask the groundskeeper to perform avian CPR; we left on a low note.


5. We drove out to see Canterbury Cathedral, where Thomas Beckett, the Archbishop, was murdered by Henry II's knights in 1170. Murdered doesn't really do it justice. The top of his head was sliced off with a sword, and one overeager knight plucked out his brain with the tip of his sword and swirled it around the cathedral floor. After his death, local visitors to the site began to experience miracles and so the cathedral became one of the most important pilgrimage sites in the Middle Ages (one such group of pilgrims is the subject of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales). The site is stunning. The items in the giftshop, on the other hand, struck me as a bit questionable.

We don't have the heart to take it down

I wonder, how long will the Cross Spider who this morning spun a GIGANTIC web across our front stoop, totally blocking our exit, stay in its current location? Anyone?

***

7:15 am:

"Christie, get down here! Quick!!"

"What is it?"

"It's a trap! Jesus!! That thing was just waiting for me to walk out half asleep and get tangled in that web and then it would have put its fangs right in my eye!!"

***

Unbelievable! The web really spans the entire front porch and there is no way around or under it. We watched (me from 5 inches, Scott from 5 feet) it as it finished putting the final strands in place. Touching the bottom of its abdomen to an anchoring thread, it would then pull away leaving a new length of web trailing behind, which would then be fixed in place with the gentle touch of its hind leg.

***

Christie, observing: "It's really beautiful."

Scott, in all seriousness: "Be careful! Don't let it jump on your face!!"

***

So we did what any nature lovers would do. We used the back door and left the spider in place.

I Pity Da Fool--Part II

I spent a little time online trying to identify the super testosterone spider I captured and released last night. Turns out it is a Nursery Web Spider, common here in Britain. There was an article in the Guardian today about how global warming has created conditions very favorable to spiders in the last few seasons, resulting in a huge population boom and many more human-spider encounters. Apparently, September is mating season, and so lots of new spiders found in the home are males on the prowl for mates. No wonder last night's spider was so wound up.

Here are a few facts about Pisaura mirabilis, gleaned from various web sites:

--Does not spin a web--hunts for prey by stalking. The female will make an egg sac and carry it around in her jaws until the eggs are nearly ready to hatch. She then constructs a tent-like protective "nursery web" and will stay to fend off predators from her young. Hence the name.

--Females often eat males during mating. In an effort to make mating less hazardous, the male will catch an insect, wrap it up and carry it around until he finds a female. He then presents it to her and mates with her while she is distracted by her meal. This lasts for about an hour or until the female has finished eating her gift.

--Many nursery spiders can run over the surface of water. The nursery spider is also called the fishing spider. They capture insects and sometimes tadpoles and small fish (holy shit!!).

--Relative of the wolf spider.

I Pity Da Fool

Last night I found a biggish spider on the stairs. I decided it was too big to leave inside, mostly because I didn't want Scott coming home and having a heart attack. Here it is with a quarter for scale (placed as close as I was willing to put my hand):
























I placed a glass over it and then slipped the closest piece of printed material at hand--the mailing sleeve from my netflix DVD-- underneath, in order to transport it outside.

Well, it freaked out. It was furious. It started beating the glass, rearing up, and I swear its little fangs stood up. Notice how it is standing up on its hind legs!!

In fact, it was thrashing about to such a degree that I had to wait a while until it calmed down. I thought Mr. T's words expressed the spider's sentiments exactly (For some reason, the A-Team on DVD is being heavily advertised over here --look closely on the mailer sleeve).

Spider Hiatus and the Wrath of the Brazilian Clipper Bug

I know I've been heavy on the spiders, but they seem to be everywhere these days. Take this cool Cross Spider that I found in the garden last night:

























I showed Scott my photos last night as I downloaded them to the computer. He actually stood back from the monitor, slightly behind me, as if shielding himself. He leaned in, face grimacing, and then he recoiled. "Ueugh! UEUGH!! Come on, why do you do it to me?! I don't want to look at those things--I'm going to have nightmares, dammit!"

Turns out I am the one who dreamed that a crate of "Brazilian Clipper Bugs" (name fabricated by my subconscious) the size of Scottish Terriers was accidentally let loose in our house. They were fast moving, aggressive, and equipped with venomous, lobster-like pincers. They chased us around the house; our only defense was Scott jabbing ineffectively with a broom. We were separated (strategically--the Brazilian Clipper Bugs also had super human intelligence) and I was cornered. I tried to call to Scott to come swat me to safety, but no sound came out. I tried again. Nothing. Finally, I managed to get a scream out, which woke both of us up at around 4 am.

So, no more spiders for a while.

Smart!

This morning while driving Scott to the train, we saw the fox who lives down the road, which is not unusual. We stopped the car to observe the fox, which was maybe 10 feet ahead of us on the sidewalk. It was not in the mood to be observed and so it trotted down the sidewalk toward us, crossing the street behind our car before slipping into the woods opposite. Fascinating that it did not dart out like a squirrel or cat would, in front of the car, but went out of its way to the safety behind the car.

The other night Scott complained that there were too many bugs gathering on our bedroom ceiling lately and that we should start closing the window at night. Looking up, I could see he was right. It was a little out of control--half a dozen moths, loads of little black wingey bugs, a few huge mosquito killers, etc. However, I need to sleep with an open window and so I responded, distractedly, that we just needed a spider. Well, what do you know? Last night I noticed two spiders in our bedroom, and no other bugs. How do spiders do that? Find the best real estate and move in when the market is hot? A survey of our garden this morning confirms that spiders are excellent location scouts. They're where the bugs are, waiting patiently underneath porch lights and garbage can handles, near flowering plants and any spots that collect water. How do they know?

Back to our bedroom spiders: one has spun an orb web the size of a dessert plate stretching from the curtain that frames the open window to the dresser, sitting at about thigh height. A good location for catching bugs as they enter the room, but a crappy location if it wants to stay off Mr. Arachnophobe's radar. Perhaps it can be coaxed to a more discreet location before this evening.

Finally, on a related note: Check out What's That Bug if you need help identifying anything. Excellent web site!

"Living in the Shadows"

According to Wikipedia, that is what the latin species name for the Walnut Orb-Weaver Spider (nuctenea umbratica) means. Another web site translates it as "fond of idling, in retirement." Well, either name accurately describes our side view mirror resident, which I have finally positively identified! Last night, I was able to get the clearest picture yet which I then compared to numerous photos on spider identification web sites. Apparently, this is a very common spider found throughout Europe. It typically hides under bark or in other dark crevices awaiting prey (holding a monitoring line to its web which alerts it if it's caught something).

Descriptions I read used words like "ominous looking" and "sinister" but the most amusing thing I found was the London Natural History Museum's list of "bite reports" which read as follows:

'Felt like a puncture from a bramble thorn. Site of the bite slightly raised and white (no reddening). Pain gone after 6 hours.'

'Pain like an electric shock from finger to elbow with the arm going numb; recovered after a few hours.'

'Itchiness and hot feeling on arm, large red patch (2" x 4") became worse within hour, plus white lumps; horrible burning feeling - felt bruised for some days.'

Though they are slow moving, I now know to keep my distance in future photos sessions.

Spider, 12:15 am

Poor Scott. He's been working like a dog this week. Out the door before 7 am, home late into the evening. I was going to pick him up at the train last night and when i walked out to the car, there was our spider!! (see yesterday's post)

One of the (many) reasons I love Scott is that even after an 18 hour work day, on antibiotics for bronchitis, and having only had 6 hours of sleep the night before, he had the energy and presence of mind to praise my homemade strawberry ice cream.

Summer corn and spider

Sucker that I am for agritainment, I went to Garson's this morning, my favorite spot in all of England (so far) for vegetables and fruit. It's a sprawling farm in Esher where you can stroll lazily through fields, Wellies on your feet, basket on your arm, picking berries or digging up carrots and feeling very bucolic. This week I picked corn, turnips, strawberries, raspberries, sunflowers and dahlias. Does anything beat an ear of just picked, late summer corn?

Also of note: We bought a car about three weeks ago. We discovered, right away, the presence of a large, furry spider living inside the driver side mirror. Each night it builds a fantastic web stretching from the mirror to the driver side door. Each morning, Scott drives 45 miles to his office on the A3 at 75mph and the web survives with minimal damage (which is reparied by the time Scott leaves the office in the evening). A feat of engineering! We have seen the spider only twice. I cannot understand why a spider living here, in the country, would chose the driver side mirror of our VW station wagon over the more stable, non-moving options that abound. I tried to photograph this morning's web. I will try again in different light (and maybe I'll even get the spider).