Good morning,
Time to contribute to this piece of web real-estate...
Well it's just after 1am and again I'm in the spell, or 'web' (haha) of my little garden guests.
You see the house I rent with my wife and two dogs, is a veritable botanic garden of sorts. There is a small patch of grass in the back about 10m x 4m; and the rest is an overdose of horticulture. Simply too much for people like us who'd be happy with gravel. Who needs five 10foot high cactus plants?
Because of this little front and back wonderland, I guess we attract the best of the indigenous wildlife. Possums every night taunting the dogs, whom if they had wings, would seriously save us thousands in dog food. But most of all, my current fancy, SPIDERS!
I guess this infatuation all started a couple weeks ago when a venomous white-tail spider literally began to crawl down my boxers whilst I was in bed. I did the whole, body-convulsion, electrocution type move, and managed to flick my hand behind myself, and send the spider flying. Yet it managed to give me a dry bite during contact. Because I am a huge portion of man, I had no reaction, except to hunt it down and pull my wife from off the ceiling who was almost catatonic in fear.
After finding him under the bed and sending him to Werribee, I decided to do a bit of bedtime iPad research into spiders. Firstly I was preoccupied with identifying any repercussions of a white-tail bite, yet after not vomiting like it suggested, I read more about its nature and discovered that it is a hunter. So not being one to hold a grudge against puny insects, I forgave him.
Now being somewhat of a Wikipedia Spider expert, my mind was open to more spider endeavours.
Two nights ago after a lovely provincial Italian dinner, I wandered out in the moonlight, onto our back decking, and found a seriously impressive spider web. The circular web was about 50cms in diameter yet the web was structured so it hung from about two metres from the back of the house across some fern type plant leading into the overhanging branch of a weird white conifer tree.
The craftsmanship of the web was stunning, matched by the brilliant imagination of the spider to connect such a web across such a vast distance. Truly impressive, I'm calling you Gerald.
So now in full David Attenborough mode, I searched the house for an insect to feed into Gerald's web. If I wasn't going to see this web made, then damn it, I'm going to watch something die in it!
No luck though, insect free zone that night.
But alas, part two to the arachnid story.
It seems these guys make webs every second night. In the morning the web is totally gone, and they continue to undertake 'Egyptian Pyramid' worthy construction feats all over again.
This time my attention is on the front yard as Gerald, has been outdone by FOUR other spectacular webs. One of these is Louvre worthy; a masterpiece! I call its creator Pablo, about twice as big as Gerald and has the web to match. There's a lot to be said what can be achieved with eight legs and a serious beer gut.
So this time I found a cockroach, silly little thing was right at the front door, only a few metres away from Pablo's pad. It was meant to be. Without further ado, and carefully maneuvering amongst the two other webs to get to Pablo, I carefully laid the befuddled cockroach onto the sticky web.
Pablo freaked out at first and retreated to the top of this web. Given he has a flashlight in his face along with his 'house' shaking like buggery, I'll forgive his initial reaction to my offering.
Pablo took about a minute, then ran down the web and did the whole, spinning the prey in a cocoon like state, carefully expelling the superweb from his belly to contain the cockroach. Then he reinforced his prey into the web and just hung about.
So that's how the night ended, a very happy Pablo and satisfied nature addict. Until next time ...
BTW - on the off chance anyone reads this, give to www.qld.gov.au/floods
