Season of the Spiders?

Comes July, and the spiders are grown up and spinning. Remember those golden garden spiders hanging upside down in their large webs, in the bushes beside the house? We kids called them “writing spiders” because the white patterns in the center of the web looked like big letter “W.” And the little girl next door would tell you, if the spider wrote your name in its web, something bad would happen to you. (Wonder whatever happened to that nasty little girl?)

In the vegetable garden, among the pepper and tomato plants, you could run smack into the web of one of those mean-looking little spiny-backed spiders. Wipe the web off your face. Where did the spider go? Is it in my hair?

Back in the garden shed, reaching for a hoe handle, you’d poke your hand into a tangled web. Hey, could it be a dangerous fiddle-back spider? No, there it sits in the web, a long-legged cellar spider. Brush the web off your hand. Look loser. No, its not a daddy-log-legs.

Under the porch light at night, a big wolf spider feeds on a cricket that got too close. That one will bite, I know from experience. (It used to be called “Lycosa.” Now, it’s “Hogna.” Why must those names change?)

This hasn’t been a good year for spiders, here in Georgia. I don’t see the garden spiders I’m used to. Too dry, too hot in June when they’re growing up?

I’ll keep watching.

(By the way – thanks to all for encouraging me to proceed with the Lifetime TV interview. I’ll go to Florida for taping on August 1st. Stay tuned – as they say).

Dac Crossley
July 9, 2011

With spiders I have friendship made,
And watched them in their sullen trade. – Lord Byron

Comments

[Mike Draney]

Hey Dac,

thanks for the spider shout-out! Good to hear you're still thinking about them, like Byron did. I imagine your black widows are mostly brown widows (L. geometricus) now? They are introduced. The easiest way to tell the difference is that brown widow egg sacs have odd little tufts of silk whereas "our" black widows have smooth egg sacs.

Dac, don't be hard on the name changers...we mistakenly thought our big wolves were related to Eurasian Lycosa, but they aren't, so they get their own name. We want the names to reflect their lineage as best we can, right? I guess I'm used to spiders changing their names as often as some people change their facebook profile photo. You just have to roll with it. Have an arachnidy day, DAC!

[Dac Crossley]

Glad to hear it, Teresa. It may be that my yard is more shaded - my trees have really grown in the past decade.

[Teresa]

Hello Dac. I am surprised you don't see the writing spiders...we do and we live right behind you. Are you referring to the one with the yellow and black body ? The ones we have have a body the size of your little finger-nail. Ours are the ones that "write" in the middle of their web.

[Dac Crossley]

Forgive me my typos -

[Judy Gunn]

It's called 'daddy or granddaddy long-legs' - not log legs....
couldn't resist pointing out the obvious.

[Dac Crossley]

That's the Golden Silk Orbweaver, sometimes called the "banana spider" because it looks about that size. I've see it all the way to the East Texas coast.

[Paige]

I love the huge (8 inches across) yellow and black spiders from the woods on the coast.

The only spiders I've seen lately are the black widows in my rock wall. Yuck!! Do they really serve a purpose?