Funny true spider stories!

[Cororon]

Maybe not funny, but it made me smile! Big Neighbour casually walked out on his web to do maintenance work. He plucked a strand of silk to get a feeling of what he should do and decided to place a couple of new strands of silk. The web has to have the right tension, you know. So ♪ do-do-do ♫ he placed a couple of strands, tied them nicely, and glued a couple to the floor. Then he found a little "blob" on the floor. He wrapped it up and carried it back home. I took a couple of pics to identify what the blob was, and it turned out to be a tiny beetle pupa.

Good job, Big Neighbour!

 

[Cororon]

A couple of years ago when I was still a bit scared of spiders, but was starting to learn more about them, I saw a dark velvety spider on the kitchen floor. It was a Scotophaeus blackwalli mouse spider. I took a piece of paper and a drinking glass to catch it, but it ran under the stove. I moved the stove and thought "I might as well clean the floor under it", as a silly excuse... and the spider then ran into a hole in the wall (where there used to be a cable coming through). Not the funniest spider story, but a mouse spider and a "mouse spider hole" in the wall at least made me smile.

 

[RezonantVoid]

Last year when pairing some of my trapdoors, the male was drumming for about 10 minutes straight before the female about twice his size just came flying out of the burrow to stare him in the face for about 5 minutes to tell him to shut it, and then backed slowly down the hole again. He just sat there dejected for a few minutes before sulking out of the enclosure onto my hand and spent the next 2 days curled up in his container

 

[Cororon]

For a while I've only had one Steatoda bipunctata spider in my flat since Mini (a male) and Little (a female) had left their webs. Now this morning I found a web near the door to the flat, and on the middle of it sat a new bipuntacta. That was a bad place because she had built it just above mail and stuff I needed. So I caught her in a glass and put her next to one of the empty webs where Little used to live. The spider played dead on her back for 45 minutes, and suddenly she rolled over and ran up on her new web! She hid in the retreat for a couple of hours, and then I put a hydei fruit fly on the web. She came out, but the fly got loose and she had to chase it.

It's amazing and funny how easy it is to "re-web" Steatodas! They don't mind at all to live on a web that another one have built.

Oh, the story from Oct 2 above I called Big Neighbour a "he". I wrote that before I noticed that the male had left and that a female lives there now! It's good that I use gender neutral names for my spiders. It simplifies things a lot!

 

[Ratmosphere]

After a night on the town and being a bit intoxicated I decided to do some feedings so I wouldn’t have to in the morning. Big mistake. Everything was fine until I dropped a cricket in for a Viridasius fasciatus. This startled the spider and it BOLTED out of the enclosure, had no idea where it went.

After 10 minutes of searching for her I saw her near a small crevice she easily could have fit in. I slowly grab my catch cup and BAM, got her. Safely put her back in the enclosure as my forehead drips sweat.

Never do intoxicated maintenance or feeding. I never will again!

 

[RezonantVoid]

So yesterday on a bush walk I'd caught a rather pretty Arbanitis sp. trapdoor and while returning we walked past a tour guide telling a group about some kind of deadly spider, which we presumed were the funnelwebs native to the area so we stopped and quickly listened. When he'd finished talking I asked one of the other listeners is it was the funnelwebs he was describing and she said "nah, just the trapdoors", which contrary to everything the guide had said, are completely harmless. So, I just said "oh right. I got one right here!" And breifly pulled out the catch cup it was in. The look of horror at the fact I was carrying this "deadly, aggressive spider" in my jumper pocket nearly had me on the ground laughing