BogeyMan Freak Out

There’s very little in nature that disturbs me. I can watch with fascination the way predators stalk their prey, study the little bones left behind in owl pellets, and look at snotty-faced hogs like they’re as cute as bunnies.

I adore spiders, all of them.

greenlynx09-17-09.jpgIt would never occur to me to kill one, unless my family was in danger from a venomous one. Some of them make such beautiful webs — incredible works of art and science and skill all rolled into one, though to the spider it’s a just a normal way of life. I’ve walked into more webs and had more spiders in my big mass of hair than I care to admit, but I still love them.

web06-05-10.jpgI could cuddle with the biggest of snakes.

snake06-05-10.jpgI’d probably prefer not to have to outrun a taipan or to fall flat on my face in front of a rattler, but that’s life or death — and that’s different. I guess I’m not a fan of ticks, either, but then who would be? They carry terrible diseases and suck your BLOOD. But they don’t invoke fear in me. Not that feeling of panic that makes you shriek and want to flee far away. Well, there was that time in a deer grove near Uvalde that I looked down to see hundreds of ticks crawling onto my shoes — I’ll say that I did stare for a moment with fascination before doing the big “Get These Terrible Ticks Off Me” dance. None managed to reach my skin, thank goodness. 

I study flies and bees and slugs with equal amazement. Animal carcasses you find on a trail? Gross, yes, but the stink would drive me away before the sight would.

People say bats, and I run outside with a camera. I love the feel of slimy earthworms in my hand. I’ve been stung by a scorpion and lived to tell the tale. I’ve dealt with wasp hives and hornets and learned to appreciate the creepy-crawling of the zillion-legged centipede. I’d curl up with a lion if it wouldn’t eat me.

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But there is a creature that gets to me. Perhaps that’s a poor way to word it.

The freak-out creature for me used to be a roach. I still remember the horror from my childhood of waking up in my room in the middle of the night, freaky shadows cast on the walls by oleanders outside the louver windows, their leaves and branches swaying eerily in the strong wind. In a moonlit spot on the wall, I saw a dark spot, and as my eyes adjusted I realized it was a the biggest roach I’d ever seen (and living in Corpus Christi at the time, I was no stranger to roaches). But this one was clearly the Big Bad Brown Roach from Dark Forces of Evil, and it was watching me. I could feel its little eyes staring at me from across the room.

moonb03-29-10.jpgI stayed as still as I could, trying to muster the nerve to call out for my mom, or better yet flee. But it held me trapped by its dark gaze, long antennas wiggling all around, and I’d never felt such an intense moment in all the five years of my life. And instinctively I knew something was about to happen, and I grabbed the edge of my blanket in my hands just as that giant roach flew across the room directly at me. FLEW! I had never seen one fly, but this sucker did, and my screams of terror from under my blanket must have woken up the whole neighborhood and probably utterly panicked my poor mother who had to find out what was torturing and trying to kill her youngest daughter.

My grandmother’s house had lots of roaches. Little ones and big ones. Driven by that roach’s attack on my childhood innocence, I went after them with a vengeance whenever I was visiting and saw them. By the way, I can slap a mosquito with the best of them. Grandmother had an infestation of crickets, too, but I could tolerate them somewhat. That reminds me of the year of the grasshoppers, when swarms of giant grasshoppers covered northern Texas, and they’d fly at us across the water when we tried to go sailing, a big white target for long-legged flying green grasshoppers. Shudder. I remember my stepmother shrieking over and over again while holding up a big towel to keep them from landing on her. A few years later, it was the year of the crickets, and stores had to sweep them out by the thousands onto the sidewalks and streets. They’d make a wall look black as they crawled up the sides.

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In a biology lab in college, I once had to dissect a live roach. Not those flat little scurrying things we all find to be pests from time to time. No, this was one of those big fat roaches from the southern U.S., Georgia as I recall. We had to basically dismantle it body part by body part, including the fat globs of marshmallow creme, until it was nothing but head and gut tract — and it was still alive! Its little jaws just gnawed away. THIS is why roaches will outlive humans by millions of years.

In case you are wondering, I was a Zoology major in college. We weren’t given a choice about dissecting things, and I won’t list them all here. But the scientist side of me took care of business, and really, the internal organs were just as fascinating as the animals themselves. Bodies in general are works of wonder. Beyond that, I tried not to think too much about what I was doing. 

I do recall the Giant Rat in high school. One night I was closing the curtains on our louver windows (I will NEVER willingly have louver windows in my adulthood, given the horrors they bring) when I saw a fat scaly tail hanging from the curtain where the drawstrings were. MOM! A giant rat! Neither of us wanted to try to get it out of there, and it wasn’t budging on its own, and all we could see was that terrible tail dangling. So we decided to leave the door to the garage open to give it a chance to leave on its own (it probably came in through there). And we went to bed. Next thing I knew, my mom was nudging me awake, whispering that the giant rat was in her room. Why on earth she left her bedroom door partly ajar with such a monstrosity loose in the house, I’ll never know. This time we went in with brooms in hand, ready to defend against and drive out the small intruder with giant freaky tail. It turns out that it wasn’t a rat, neither giant nor little, but the cutest little baby possum (sharp teeth and all), and it was just as scared as we were. We gently helped it outside.

But while I might squeal at the sudden scurries of little mice or the unexpected appearance of a snake around a corner, none of it disturbs me, and my reaction turns fast to interest. But the creature of all creatures to utterly unnerve me is this. The Harvestman. The Bogeyman, if you ask me.

harvestmana06-05-10.jpgSome people call them daddy longlegs, or granddaddy longlegs. But whatever you call them, don’t call them spiders. Because that’s what they are NOT.

The harvestman is an arachnid, yes, but not a spider. Its body segments are closely joined to seem fused into a single oval.

harvestmanb06-05-10.jpgAnd they’ve got those freakily long legs. If they just stayed still, I could MAYBE get used to them. But… 

harvestmand06-05-10.jpgThe way they bob up and down and quiver as they walk, they way they gather in black throbbing blobs on walls, the way they move their long legs around when threatened– EEEEEK. I never really cared for them before, but visiting the narrow cave at Enchanted Rock in college and crawling in dark spaces only to look above and realize the ceiling is quivering, and then to realize with horror that you have thousands of pulsing harvestmen inches from ALL YOUR HAIR, and yeah, that’s what did it for me. The word for the masses is “aggregation,” a term you never want associated with creatures that freak you out.

harvestmanc06-05-10.jpgIt’s the quivering. It’s the way they move. I really should capture a video, but I’m feeling pretty weirded out just by how close I had to get to take the pictures. Why? Because when I got close they started to move! They freaked out and started moving and pulsing up and down and then waved their long second legs around like antenna at me, and then I freaked out and I’m just lucky I didn’t fall off the ladder I was standing on. Did you know that the legs can keep twitching after they are detached, due to little pacemakers in the first segment? I read that — I did not try it out. Apparently detaching their twitching leg is actually a defense mechanism to help them escape from predators.

harvestmane06-05-10.jpgBut in researching them, I reluctantly have to admit that they should probably maybe sort of go on the list of a garden’s beneficial creatures. They are predators and scavengers both, and if they’d just stay out of sight, they’d be kind of sort of tolerated in my garden. They can’t hurt me or my family, other than to give me a heart attack! But no, they are currently on my house, and if their numbers start to increase and my heart starts getting that fight or flight feeling too many times, they’re going to have to go. I will not have big quivering wiggling black masses making me relive my cave experience over and over again! THIS IS WHAT NIGHTMARES ARE MADE OF, PEOPLE.

harvestmanf06-05-10.jpgLet’s jump right in with a new poem shall we?

O Harvestman, My Bogeyman
© 2009, Great Stems

I think that I should never see
A Harvestman coming straight at me
Even worse is what I fear
That thousands of them gather here.
Lurking, bobbing, on the wall
Legs that make them ten-feet tall

FYI, I’m not actually scared of the harvestman. I won’t really run screaming in terror when I see it. But it does creep me out a lot, a LOT, and you won’t catch me hanging out around it for long. They might creep me out, but I don’t really wish them ill will. I just wish them a new location.

So I’ve told a long tale, and in it confessed my nature weaknesses. What in nature freaks you out?

———–

EDIT, same day: A funny thing happened after I wrote this post. I finished saving it and got in the car to head to a swim meet. I was still all creeped out after writing the post and doing all those pictures, so I was still thinking about the effects the harvestmen have on me and I started thinking up new lines for the poem. Well, I was driving on a rather long empty road and a cop pulled me over. It was a beautiful blue snazzy “police chase” kind of car, too — one of those new ones that make your jaw drop. Part of me thought it was kind of cool to be pulled over by the most awesome police car ever. Of course, I was in a mini-van — not so cool. Well, the dialogue went something like this:

Ma’am, do you know why I pulled you over?

          Ummmm… (serious pause here) maybe I was driving too fast?

Yes, ma’am — that stretch of road is marked as 45, and you were going 60.

         Oh. (pause) Well, I was thinking about something that had me freaked out. It was
         those harvestmen, those daddylonglegs. And they were all on my house. And they were
         quivering and bobbing, and I’m still creeped out by them. And I guess I didn’t know
         I was driving fast. I’m not a speeder by nature.

Please sign here, ma’am.

        Here? Okay.

Thank you, ma’am. Well, this is just a warning about your speed. It would have been a ticket, but in all my years, I’ve heard lots of stories, and I’ve never heard one like that before. 

By the way, Austinites, don’t speed on McNeil, that part near the railroad as it heads toward Wells Branch. Mr. Cool Cop Car might be there waiting for you, but if he is, he’s really nice. 

Predator vs. Predator

spottedorb06-01-10d.jpgWinner: Spider

I’ve been talking a lot about the nature of nature lately, and yesterday the garden presented me with yet another example, again making me ponder my emotions in relation to what happens in “the real world.”

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 As excited as I’ve been watching the dragonflies and damsels zoom about my garden, I had mixed feelings about seeing this Spotted Orbweaver, possibly a Western Spotted Orbweaver, with its captured prize, a female Common White dragonfly. Two predators, both beneficial in a garden, but only one could win. And the truth is, the dragonfly didn’t have a chance, with her wings caught in the spider’s web.

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 Am I sad? Absolutely. But am I okay with it? Absolutely. I just wish the timing hadn’t been right after I happily followed dragonflies around for decent photos. I guess the spider was showing me how to really stalk dragonflies.

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By the way, believe it or not, there is an animal in nature that does get me a little squeamish. But I’ll save that post for another day, hee hee.

Eight Legs and Three Beaks

A bit of camouflage today.

This spider was not happy with the photographer. Bad hair day? Most likely mine.

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And hidden in our shed, a nest with at least three baby birdies. The nest was just out of reach of any decent light (had to use a flash), and I really didn’t want to disturb the babies for too long just to try to get a better picture. They’ve grown so fast — I wish I had documented the stages.

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If you look really closely and use your imagination, there’s evidence of three baby wrens in the nest. That big one on top is playing mama and keeping the other two warm, I guess!

Speaking of Mama Bird, she also was not happy with the photographer. Bad hair day strikes again!

I suppose technically that this post should have been Fourteen Legs and Three Beaks. Or Sixteen Legs and Four Beaks if you count Mama Bird. Papa Bird was around, too — now we’re up to Eighteen Legs and Five Beaks. Then there’s the photographer… Twenty Legs and Five Beaks and Two Lips. There ya go.

The Lovable Furry Creature

It started out like any other afternoon. I went out to garden and got distracted immediately by butterflies flutterbying. Then I noticed two Queen butterflies doing their thing on the fence by the veggie garden, and as I just couldn’t miss the photo opportunity, I ran to get the camera. Just in case you are interested, the male is at the fence’s edge, and the female is upside-down.

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But what I really want to draw your attention to is the sneaky little voyeur nicely camouflaged in the lower right corner. I didn’t notice it until the Queens flew away.

And suddenly I forgot all about those pretty butterflies, and I was in love. Sorry, hubby.

jumpingspiderc11-13-09.jpgIsn’t she CUTE? Here she is again, turned for your viewing pleasure.

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She has interesting markings on her back. She’s some species of Phidippus, but I couldn’t find a similar spider online with those kinds of markings. So for now, she’s “Phidippus Meredith.”

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Would she have attacked the butterflies if they hadn’t flown off? Did they fly off because of me (probably) or the spider? I guess we’ll just never know!

After a bit I pulled my two plain blue eyes away from her eight gorgeous hypnotic black eyes and went to check on the veggies, where I found this monster chewing away. NOT cute.

lettucepest11-13-09.jpgMy son came outside then, so I rushed to show him the spider. And look what she had caught! Smart girl! What is that?

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Look, now she’s giving it a hug!

jumpingspidere11-13-09.jpgShe loves it!

jumpingspiderh11-13-09.jpgNot too far away, I found another jumping spider (and I was ecstatic, of course). This one is Phidippus mystaceus, also CUTE. How can you resist her? She’s so furry and lovable. Her eight eyes give her remarkable vision. Quite the tracker. Little flies would land near her, and she would turn her body instantaneously to watch them.

jumpingspiderb11-13-09.jpgBye, little spider! I love you!

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Spiny-Backed Orb Weaver

spinyorb11-09-09.jpgThis little lady’s been a pleasure and a nuisance to have around. We love spiders, so we welcomed her little apartment web and love bringing her the occasional bug treat. But she’s chosen to attach her web to a ladder, a brand new planter I’m wanting to fill, and a tree that hangs over our back gate, so her web is in a most inconvenient spot!

When we first saw the spider a few days ago, it was actually my youngest son that helped me identify it. He called it a Thorn Spider, having learned about it in school — it turns out that’s what similar spiders in Madagascar are called. Here they are Spiny Orb Weavers, or Spiny-Backed Orb Weavers. They come in a variety of color combinations.

While trying to take a picture, I got to study her a bit, and a little research supported my observations. Rather than wrapping small prey in silk, she traveled along a web line, snagged the prey, dangled from a fresh silk line, and then traveled up the line to the reposition herself in the center of the web before enjoying her feast directly.

How do I know she’s a she spider? It’s the females that make the webs, a new one every single day. You won’t catch me building a new home every day! Or, say, ever.

I’m glad I was able to get a picture of her before she moves on to another web spot. I was worried that yesterday’s rains would make her leave. But she’s back. But every day prior to this, she’s been in eye view. Today I had to climb on a folding chair, get on my tippy-toes, and snap several shots of a moving spider in a web being blown by the breeze. I’d have used a ladder to get higher, but the silly spider attached her web to it!

For a look at a beautiful red version, check out Linda’s at CTGardener. If they weren’t both females, I’d say we should breed them and make a pink one!

P.S. Check out the markings on the back — in some places people call these spiders “smiley face spiders”! 🙂

The Indiscriminate Hunter

Meet the Green Lynx Spider (Peucetia viridans), a common spider in Texas and Mexico. It surprised me when I was out inspecting my sugar pumpkin vines. I’m amazed I saw it — its lime-green coloring makes it perfectly camouflaged against the vines, and though it was on a bloom and holding a bee, I’m pretty sure what drew my eyes to it were those hairy legs.

greenlynx09-17-09.jpgI’m sad that it chose for its meal one of my precious honeybees, but I’m glad this beneficial spider has found my garden. It might pounce on bees, but it also feasts on wasps (which had been getting out of control during the summer) and pest moths and caterpillars (they’re arriving). This beautiful spider is a female, and like most spiders, she’s much larger than the typical male. The female Green Lynx spiders are fierce protectors of their egg sacs — I’m pleased, because I’d like to see more of them around the garden.

The spines on the spider’s legs seem to match little hairs on the pumpkin blooms, stems, and foliage. With her perfect camouflage, it’s easy for this spider to hide and lurk, and then leap onto her prey, which is how lynx spiders got their name. 

Pumpkin Army Bases, Day 15

I think I need a better name than Pumpkin Army — this veggie gardening endeavour just gets bigger and bigger. I’ve now added corn to the plan. Alas. This is what research does for you! It also gets you: trellises!

trellis3.jpgI’m back from camping. It was good fun — and nice to have a change of pace. I’d like to say that all my plants survived my absence, but I’m happy that most of them did (mourning the rest). The seedling army grows.

pumpkinseedlings07-20-09.jpgAnd of our three swallowtail caterpillars happily munching away before we left, we found one chrysalis, so we’ll try to monitor it for butterfly-ness. Of course, it’s in a place that is very hard to get a picture, and it’s also in a place that the butterfly will have a hard time getting out of without our help. 

Though my DH didn’t quite get to all the plants, he certainly tried, and it was nice to return home to additional hoses and hand sprinklers so that I don’t have to drag hoses around to water those plants far away from civilization, my house. (It’s not that I hadn’t thought of it, I just was trying to avoid spending the money!) In addition, he made great progress on the raised garden beds, which means I will soon have the cantaloupes happily planted.  

trellis1.jpgThe jack-o-lantern pumpkins are going to be spread around the yard and will have to brave possible trampling by dogs, scary because the vines are so important to the size and quality of the pumpkins. I’ve got three jack-o-lantern pumpkins in the ground now, with more to come, maybe. I put them in little mounds, and for now I surrounded them with rocks to help the dogs avoid them. One of them is near some other plants, so I’ll have to guide the vines other directions, as best I can. It will have to do — those vines are growing so fast that I wanted them in the ground as soon as possible. I’ll get some marigolds and radishes near them for bug repellents. It’s apparently not the right season to grow radishes, but if they’ll keep the bugs away, I’ll try!

jackpumpkins07-20-09.jpgThe cantaloupes will be in a raised garden bed, grown vertically on a trellis. All in all, we’ll have three raised veggie beds (for now, haha). The cantaloupes will be in one, along with corn and some marigolds, and sugar pumpkins will be in another, with some more corn. The third bed will be prepared for yummy fall planting goodness. The third bed was made for me by my kids this weekend, their first project working with drills and saws and whatnot!

pumpkinseeds.jpgTo prepare the area, we dug out the grass. It was dead, so other than dealing with the hard soil, it was no loss and only somewhat of a pain. Then, with the frames in place, I mixed in compost into the existing soil. I expect some plant roots to extend into that soil, so I wanted to enrich it somewhat. How hard was the soil? Casualty, one shovel.

 
brokenshovel.jpgFor the main bed soil, I decided to follow “Mel’s Mix” for square-foot gardening. I talked with the folks at Natural Gardener before doing this, and they had various suggestions (including Mel’s Mix), but nothing really any better or worse. The other option I considered was mixing compost with more of my clay soil, but that would have involved more digging. Forget that! Once I got the stuff home, I read on the bag about dust concerns with the vermiculite, and I felt a little concerned that I’d made a bad choice, but a little more research online made me feel better. 

melsmix.jpgIn mixing the soil, I felt a lot like Hermione in front of a big cauldron at Hogwarts. It was fun mixing it, I admit. I did add in some bonus clay soil from a pile in the yard, for good measure. It’s that secret ingredient in my special sauce.

trellis2.jpgtrellis4.jpgBecause someone at NG told me that peat moss can be a pain to get wet at first, I decided to wet down the soil well and plant tomorrow. Sure enough, I had to work with the peat moss in a big soup of mud to get it to soak in the water. Then I really did feel I was creating a magical potion! Tomorrow will be a good planting day. First I’ll get the trellis wires in place and the grid. Then in will go the cantaloupes and marigolds and some corn seeds.

trelliswire.jpgSide story… While I was digging the soil for the frames, I found a weird, soft little tube. At first I thought that it was, pardon me, some old dog poop. But then it split open, and a spider carcass fell out. Squeal. And then lots of little spiders came out and crawled over the spider carcass. Shriek! While I was wondering whether they had eaten the spider, more horrors awaited me… the legs of a gigantic spider appeared. And they MOVED. And more baby spiders crawled out and over the legs… By now, I’d made loud enough noises that the kids came running over. And finally the whole spider slid out, and it was the biggest spider I’d ever seen in my yard. Yes, tarantulas are even bigger, but I haven’t seen one as a resident yet. Despite my startled reaction to the sudden appearance of this spider and her babies, I find her beautiful. Can you see some of her babies in this picture?

trapdoorspider1.jpgIt turns out this spider is a female trapdoor spider, and she creates a silk tube-like burrow for hunting purposes, laying eggs, and feeding young. I felt some major guilt about disrupting this little family. But once the babies left the tube, all I could do was scoop up (with the shovel) some of the dirt they crawled upon and get them to a prepared garden bed instead of letting them get buried under the dirt I was lifting and turning. The mom spider went to a shady spot, because she looked so shiny and that “carcass” I saw was probably her molted exterior. Or perhaps her mate, eep! 

trapdoorspider2.jpgHopefully they’ll survive. Guilt, guilt. Live, spiders, and go eat my pest bugs!

Speaking of horrific creepy-crawlies, check out this bug I found in Oklahoma. At first I saw beautiful wings and thought it was a really unique and large moth. But then I saw the head and its enormous pincher-like mouth. My guess is it’s not a moth! This bug was more than 3 inches long, front to end. Imagine this bug about the size of a house. It’s got B-movie horror written all over it!   Edit: I googled and determined that this is a female dobson fly. Takes some of the fun out, knowing the name, doesn’t it? 🙂 

OKbug.jpgWe saw a pretty cool leaf butterfly of some sort there, too, and many spiders. This picture didn’t turn out as well as I’d like, but I like the overall effect of the image.

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The Oklahoma state parks seem to be very nicely managed and maintained, more so than some of our Texas ones. I loved that they had litter bags to help people keep the trails clean. My only complaint was that they didn’t offer any recycling options for bottles or cans anywhere. We kept our recyclables and brought them back to Texas with us. Green points earned!

OKlitterbag.jpgI loved the bark of the pine trees at Robber’s Cave.

OKpine.jpgAll along the highways and in the state park itself, the beautiful but very invasive mimosa silk tree could be seen. I have a close-up of the flower, but I felt too guilty about admiring the beauty to post it. Bad invasive, bad! 

OKmimosa.jpgAt least it’s prettier than the invasive Chinaberry all over Austin.

The Austin Pond Society Pond Tour was this weekend. I have lots of pictures to post over the next couple of days!