Like Spiders?

Oh, so this is pretty interesting.

Last night, Dave saw a wolf spider (not the one in that photo) in the house. Wolf spiders are outdoor spiders, so he wanted to trap it and put it back outside. Besides, the wolf spider was a mama, which he knows because she still had some babies on her back (Wolf spider mamas carry their babies around for about a week after they hatch) and Dave didn't want a bunch of wolf spider babies running around the Casita, I guess. Anyway, Dave managed to trap mama spider under a small plastic food container, and while he went to find a piece of paper or something to slide under the container to carry her outside, the spider lifted the container and ran off with her babies.

Poor thing. She must've been very scared for her little ones since she used her super spider strength to free them.

Anyway, we haven't seen her today, but Dave did find a little baby wolf spider in the shower, so we know she's dropped a few babies around already.

They're not dangerous to people, wolf spiders, and I don't mind having spiders in the house (they're very lucky, I think) but they are happier outdoors where there's lots of stuff for them to eat. I think the indoor pickings for wolf spiders will be slim once they eat all the house spiders.

It's funny, though. That wolf spider in the photo up there is not the spider mama and I didn't specifically go looking for a wolf spider photo. While I was casting about for a photo for today's blog entry, I looked in my flickr archives at this day last year (May 29, 2008) and I found that photo.

A year ago to the day, one of Dave's coworkers caught the wolf spider in that photo and, knowing that Dave likes to photograph spiders, gave it to Dave to bring home and take pictures of it. After he took a bunch of photos, he released it. It hung around for awhile, crouched in a space near the door.

That was a really big spider. I didn't see the wolf spider last night, but I hope it's not that big. Not because I'm afraid of it, but it is sometimes unpleasant to be surprised indoors by a really big spider. Besides that, I don't want to have to trap it by myself. That's Dave's job.

The scariest spider I ever trapped was a black widow spider that lived under the heater near my bed. She was pretty fat and incredibly fast. It took two nights (they're pretty nocturnal in habit) of careful watching and waiting before I managed to trap her under a glass. Dave took her outside and released her.

One From The Vaults



There's another photo that I uploaded on this day last year. That's me and my younger brother (my older brother must have been off at school), and the St. Bernard we used to have. (I don't remember the dog's name.)I was probably around three, my younger brother around one. I barely remember that car, a beige Chevy Nova. I don't remember the tricycle behind it at all.

I wish I could get away with wearing my hair like that now, though.

Craftzy News

So the calavera footstool is almost finished. This is how delusional I am: When I bought the supplies to make it, I thought I'd finish it in a single day. Ha! Still, it's only been--what?--four days? So my estimate for completion was only off by 400%. I could become a professional contractor with that kind of accuracy.

I started the long varnishing process today. I'm not going to wet sand it between coats because there is no way I have that kind of dedication to the craft, but I've already put two coats of varnish on. I think five or so more coats should do the trick.

Take A Ride on the Reading

So while I was waiting for my niece to join me for lunch the other day, I picked up a copy of Robert McCrum's biography of P.G. Wodehouse, Wodehouse: A Life. I bought it because, yes, I adore Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster novels, but also because I laughed twice in the two minutes I spent perusing the book.

I was introduced to Jeeves and Wooster through the PBS series with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. (Hugh's burning up the small screen with his portrayal of House these days, but he was absolutely perfect as the mentally negligible Bertie Wooster.) After I saw the series, I read perhaps five of the novels without even knowing how to pronounce Wodehouse's name. (It's actually wood house, not whoa'd house.) It's a terrific series, worth watching.