handsful

No, not the city – the spider

And, no, I don’t usually blog about spiders…or other creepy crawlies. But, I just had to share this story. It appeals to the homeschool mama side of me…

This is Charlotte. She appeared in our laundry room window back in September. We did some searching, and found out she’s a “zipper spider” or more specifically an Argiope spider. They re-do their webs most everyday, including the “zipper” in the middle. I finally timed it right today, and watched her spin the zipper…fascinating.

This was taken today. See the difference in the background? The leaves have changed since the first picture :)

The part of this that’s interesting? We thought Charlotte was dead last week. Absolutely certain she was dead. She had dismantled the web, crawled to the top of the window, and kinda curled all up. No movement at all. I went online again and read that the zipper spider will die once the temp hits freezing and below. We’ve had several freezes, so I assumed that was it.

As I read further, it said that the female zipper spider will weave an egg sac just prior to dying, and position it near the top of where the web was. I went to the window to check…

At the top of the window sill, safely secured with webbing…an egg sac. You can get an idea of it’s size with the leaf hanging there. It’s supposed to stay there til spring, when the babies will hatch. Maybe one or two of them will hang around and live in the sill like their mama. Maybe we’ll name them Joy, Nellie, and Aranea :)

So, apparently she didn’t die, since she spun this new web today…we had a storm tonight, which tore it apart again. I wonder if she’ll spin it back again tonight. I think Charlotte’s days are numbered, but we’ll enjoy having our spider pet for now.

Flash forward to the next morning…I finally captured Charlotte making her web and zipper :) She spun the entire outside portion, and then began making the haphazard middle area.

See the bundle of silk coming out at once? She can control that perfectly, using only a single strand for the outside portion and then changing it’s thickness as needed.

Then, she crawled down a little ways, and began making the zipper back up.

Then, she crawled to the top, turned around, and made the zipper back down to the middle. This part wasn’t so perfect…I think she was just ready to be done :)

Okay, so now I’m probably done talking about spiders. To me, scenes from nature like this are just more confirmation that we have a very precise and very creative God.