Creepy but Interesting

Like most people I take personal issue with spiders. I am absolutely terrified of anything that has more than four legs. Yep, you guessed it, that means: spiders, scorpions, beetles, millipedes, and centipedes. The shocking thing is that I have no issue what so ever with tarantulas; I even nursed a tarantula with a broken leg when I was about six years old.

Now that my fear of creepy crawlies is out in the open I can tell you all a secret… Until now I had never seen a spider wrapping up a web trapped fly in person. So we are clear, I love animals and nature so I have seen my fair share of the Discovery channel. That means I have seen plenty of flies and other insects become spider food, on television.

I logically figured that since I despise spiders I had never seen this gross feeding because I avoid spiders like they have plague. Plus, I thought, what could I really see? I mean the mouth on a spider is… is… well, really freaking tiny. Short of having a magnifying glass that is super powered, what could I really see anyway?

Let’s be real, the spider is not going to set the table, wear a bib, and use a knife and fork. Again, as I said earlier, I had seen spiders doing their thing on television; and the cameras that they have are way better than anything I could even think of owning. So, obviously watching from the safety of my couch was a better view than I would have on my own.

Recently my husband and I decided to turn our man-cave into an art studio. We happen to live in Arizona, where the temperature spends a lot of time in the triple digits. This meant we worked on cleaning and organizing the contents of the man-cave in stages, often at night when the temperature was tolerable.

The man-cave is like a shed and a half attached to the house. It has a door to the house as well as the outside, which leads to the driveway. It has both a large and small work bench, a set of shelves, a large storage closet, and the rafters. The top is open, only sealed by screen for ventilation. However, the downside to the open ventilation is the dust that covers everything. Well, on top of the dust a colony of daddy long leg spiders moved into the man-cave.

Here I am in the middle of helping my husband clean a space that we are planning on using together and I had to come in the house. I could not be out there once I realized how many spiders there were. My skin was crawling just looking at them from the door of the house. I showered and waited for the crawly feeling to stop.

A few days later I tried again to help. Only this time I went out to the man-cave during the day in small bursts of about thirty minutes. I did this for two reasons; one, so I did not over heat and two so I could see clearly if anything moved. This worked well for the day that the temperature just barely reached one-hundred degrees. When my husband came home from work I showed him what I was able to accomplish. We agreed to work on it again the next day since he was off work.

We woke up at a decent time, you know, before the sun began to bake the desert. We went out and started our day. Things were going great. We were making progress and opening up a ton of space. As I began to clean off a table that had been buried in the corner I saw a few webs. I yelled for my husband and backed up.

I had not realized that my husband had gone inside for a minute. I was beginning to panic because eight legged things make my anxiety crazy bad. It was about that moment when I saw something bouncing about. Completely against my better judgement I took a closer look. I was floored… There was a fly caught in the web and “Charlotte” was wrapping it up.

My husband got to me in time to snap these pictures. Now, I am aware that this is an everyday occurrence. Hell, it most likely happens millions of times a day all over the world, but I am close to forty years old and this was the first time I had ever seen a spider wrapping up a fly. It was interesting. Creepy but interesting.