Crab Spiders
They're so cute, these crab spiders. For three days in a row I've been
watching a white one that lives in white thimbleberry flower. Today her blossom-house is all wilted, & no more prey is apt to come to her there. There are fresh thimbleberry flowers right next to her flower-house, but she hasn't yet figured out she should move next door. Couple days ago she caught a really big pollinating fly, & held onto it for two days in her big pinchers, & yesterday I was lucky enough to see her carry the husk to the edge of her house & throw it away. Crab spiders or flower-spiders take two or three days to turn the same color as the flower they lurk in, so pollinators can't see them. They don't make webs. I remember my great-grampa's cornrows of dahlias had bright blue & bright orange & bright red crab spiders waiting in the blooms to ambush pollinators. But the most common ones can turn only shades from white to yellow, & if you put one in a flower the color of which they can't match, they leave to find a white or yellow flower. When lurking in flowers & being color-coordinated, I find them so attractive & appealing. Not all crab spiders ambush from flowers, though, & sometimes a particularly big one that lives on the ground, running sideways with its front pincers raised above its head, scares the bejabbers out of me. They have great eye-sight & wave their pinchers threateningly, which is kind of weird, tiny little thing threatening to do me in if I don't go away. But the flower spiders are always quite small & pretty & sit perfectly still waiting for prey, they seem pretty sure they're invisible & never act threatened even while being watched. This morning when I saw this one's house had wilted, I touched the outside of a wilted petal, & the ivory white spider ran to the front of the flower to see if there was something to catch. I almost took it out of the wilted flower to put in a fresh one, but I suppose it'll soon enough figure that out without my help. I tried to get a picture of it: http://www.paghat.com/images/thimble...pider_june.jpg -- "Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher. "Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature. -from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers" Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com |
Crab Spiders
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When lurking in flowers & being color-coordinated, I find them so attractive & appealing. Not all crab spiders ambush from flowers, though, & sometimes a particularly big one that lives on the ground, running sideways with its front pincers raised above its head, scares the bejabbers out of me. They have great eye-sight & wave their pinchers threateningly, which is kind of weird, tiny little thing threatening to do me in if I don't go away. But it works, doesn't it?! :-) Jacqueline |
Crab Spiders
paghat wrote in message ... They're so cute, these crab spiders. snip Lovely descriptions, you're planning to write a book, right? I had a big yellow and black garden spider come in to me kitchen last september. She set herself at the top of my window and laid a little nest of eggs. I thought she'd be gone in a few weeks, but no, she lasted until late March. I fed her flies if I could find them (which was quite difficult in the winter). As we have the kind of house that often has forgotten fruit around it, there were fruit flies, and I could sometimes catch them with my tweezers and insert them into her web (which she liked: she would snatch them and eat them). Anyway, she died about three weeks ago, but her little egg basket is still there in my window, so I expect I'll have hundreds of little garden spiders everywhere within a few weeks. Bless her little cotton socks. This is a true story. s. |
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