Long time readers of this blog may remember that months ago I wrote about one of the residents in our home – an eight-legged resident, George the spider.
The picture on the right is George in December 2005. In all this time we haven’t disturbed the web or paid much attention to the spider, beyond the occasional glance to see how it was doing. The web itself is quite out of the way, in a corner of the library/dining room window. Way back then Israd suggested that George was probably a female – Israd, you were absolutely right!!!
About two days ago I went to visit George at the window, and I found himher in the act of laying EGGS!
At least, I assume that’s what the spider was doing. She was sitting over a small whiteish mound with her bottom poised and moving over the top of it. My immediate reaction was: “Uh oh. Lots of baby spiders.” How long is the gestation period of spiders? How many infants will there be? Will George expect us to be nice to her babies? And how come we never noticed a male caller?
On the left (above), George on her eggs this morning. It was really hard to get a photo, because I didn’t want to make her feel threatened. She actually reared up on her hind legs at one point and I had visions of a enraged spider spitting Evil Toxic Venom into my exposed eyes, blinding me – my imagination gets away with me sometimes – as a defense mechanism it worked though, as I backed right away.
Are we going to be overrun with tens and hundreds of baby spiders? What are they going to EAT?
Categories: spiders
10 Comments
I will be checking George and the eggs/babies out when i’m in town next month!
I wonder when they’ll hatch…
I think the last two sentences of your post are probably interconnected.
Your house won’t be overrun, because the first ones to hatch will be called breakfast by the others. (Or maybe they’ll be bigger and stronger and lie in wait).
The only spiders I allow to reside in my home are daddy long-legs. All the others are shown the door and asked nicely to move on, but please keep killing bugs.
True, Sirexkat – or they’ll get eaten by the other bugs we have around the place eventually…
Did you know, Mickey, that daddy long-legs are able to kill redback spiders? This is the source of the urban legend that daddy long-legs are the most toxic spiders out there, the reasoning being redbacks = poisonous; daddy long-legs kill redbacks, daddy long-legs > redbacks, therefore daddy long-legs = Uber Spiders. This intrigued me until I read that even if daddy long-legs are really that venomous, their jaws are far too small for them to be able to bite humans, so they are no danger to us…
Egads! I’ve had people tell me I’m crazy, because you can’t tell a daddy long-lets from a brown recluse. But from the pictures I’ve seen of the brown recluse, it looks nothing like a daddy long legs.
Eeep! Now I’m going to scrutinise each daddy long-legs and wonder if they are really brown recluses..
By the way did you get my postcard Mickey?
Has she written any messages to you in her web like Charlotte in “Charlotte’s Web”? Like “Feed my babies or they will eat each other”. sirexkat is right… expect a certain amount of cannibalism in your vicinity. 😉 Including the Daddy.
Do you know what kind it is? That would determine the gestation period and the number of babies. Maybe 100 or so …after about 3 months?
Does this make you an honorary spider-mum? 🙂
Penny, as soon as I read your comment I went and scrutinised the web. It’s a bit messy at the moment (lots of insect debris – eeuuu) but I can’t see any messages. Will have to keep an eye on it. I have never seen the daddy, although there was the corpse of a much smaller brown spider in the web some months ago…
I think it’s a black house spider (it looks like the spider in my picture – scroll down). Will it really take THREE months?
I waited and waited and watch the “dance”, so I’m pretty sure what I saw about four days ago was the mating ritual of two daddy long legs in my basement. There was nothing else it could be. The male is significantly smaller than the female. I will stay on top of this and let you know what happens and when. Also, I have the thrill of getting to spend time with the (so far) three slugs (Dustin, teh largest, Andre, the next biggest, and Beatrice, the baby) that live behind the wall in my basement. I feed them whenever I see them (cat food – they will eat anything). If I catch them mating, of course I’ll let you know about that too.
Peace,
S