Seasonal changes are happening in full force now that summer has said goodbye, and autumn is settling in with the morning dew. The colour of the leaves changes, the fruit is ripe and dropping on the ground, the geese are moving from one location to another, trying to settle into new patterns to accommodate the need for shelter and food as the days and nights are cooler.

Have you noticed the fruit flies and yellow jackets? Who better to take advantage of this new availability of food than the spiders? It’s the time when the tiny spiders try to come into the house and hang unnoticed in a ceiling corner.

The giant house spider also senses that it’s time to find more warmth and tries to come inside. While these black monsters are horrifying to me, it’s the fat beige ones that make me shudder most.  They hang in the fruit trees and coat my hands with their sticky webs as I try to pick fruit. They build webs, across the corners of the door to my deck and between the hanging baskets and the wall – right in my face as I walk by.

But this one! This one gets the prize.  The Captain was about to get into his old beater truck to move it. He opened the driver’s side door to get in, and stopped just in time before he might have ended up wearing this spider on his nose. The spider had caught something, but it was so wrapped up that it was hard to tell what poor insect was the victim. Yes, it’s spider time!

 

Intricate and complicated,

That’s how spider webs are rated,

Works of wowing wonder.

 

Delicate yet super strong,

Well-placed webs do not belong

Where the bee is busy.

 

Here she comes, the busy bee,

Much too late, she doesn’t see,

That this trap is fatal.

 

Spider leaps as insect weeps,

This is no game, this is for keeps,

Life so short, now shorter.

 

Sucked quite dry, the bee can’t fly,

And one more victim had to die,

Spider just gets fatter.