Reflections on the Fourth Week of Fall – Raising Spiders

Dewy Spiderweb between Dried Purple Coneflowers

Two weeks ago, I reached for a tissue on the kitchen counter, and a grass spider brushed against my arm. Taking refuge from fall weather, the spider rappelled on a line of silk from the bottom of a kitchen cabinet. Not where spiders belong.

Repurposing the tissue from nose blowing to spider cocooning, I―Violence Alert―squeezed. Without looking at the remains, I tossed the tissue into the burnables container. “Another spider,” I said to my husband cooking breakfast at the stove.

Spence held the cast iron skillet in one hand and stirred his concoction of bulgur, peppers, broccoli, and pork with the other. “We’re raising spiders.”

Looking beyond him to the window above the kitchen sink, I spied the black and yellow garden spider. Its web of concentric circles occupied most of the space between the window glass and screen. Spence had named the spider Charlotte for E. B. White’s famous character. I’d enjoyed watching Charlotte embalm bugs, repair the web, and hang in the sunset-lit silk waiting for prey. We weren’t really raising Charlotte, but Spence had a point about raising spiders.

Three summers ago, he’d called from the basement. “Come down. You won’t believe this.”

I tromped down the spiral stairs.

Spence pointed. “I opened the basement door. That snake slithered in between my feet.”

A coiled garter snake. Beneath the seedling shelves. Not where garter snakes belong. I took a giant step toward the stairs. “Are you going to catch it and take it outside?”

Spence stooped to evaluate. “I can’t drag it out.” He stood. “I’ll just leave it. It’ll die without food.”

As if on cue, a longbodied cellar spider crawled from under empty seedling trays stacked on the floor. “It does have food.” I took another step toward the stairs. “Spiders and bugs.” And what if the young snake climbed the stairs? Or worse, what if it were a she? She could birth several dozen babies that I’d have to dodge every time I scooped litter boxes in the basement. “We―” I meant he, “―have to get it out of here.”

Spence handled the invader―Violence Alert―with a garden folk.

I didn’t watch.

Without the garter snake, longbodied cellar spiders flourished in dark basement crannies. Better than baby snakes. But we weren’t raising the spiders yet.

 

Longbodied Cellar Spider

First we raised red wrigglers inside the worm compost factory in the shower stall of the basement bathroom.

Keeping the bathroom light on discouraged red wrigglers from escaping. I wanted the wrigglers inside the factory―turning vegetable peels and spoiled fruit into compost―not drying out on the cement floor. But raising wrigglers meant raising something else.

A year after the invading-garter-snake summer, I entered the bathroom to feed the worms and walked through a cloud of buzzing fruit flies. They crawled on white bathroom fixtures and the light gray wallboard. Worse, when I lifted the food tray lid, they darted into my eyes and up my nose. Enough. I needed to stop the population explosion of fruit flies that had sneaked in on food scraps---especially pieces of Wells Wood strawberries.

I climbed atop my step stool, balanced, and pulled a fly strip from its carton. The sticky yellow paper stuck to my sleeve, caught strands of my hair, and glued my fingertips together. Undaunted, I hung four fly strips in the bathroom―two over the worm factory, one over the sink, and one behind the door. Fruit flies landed on the strips often enough for me to change them―balancing and sticking―every other month.

Fruit flies multiplied.

So I stuck strawberry scraps in the freezer to discourage hidden fruit flies then thawed the scraps to feed the worms. And I sprinkled BTI pellets in the worm food tray, in the sink, and in a container of water.

Fruit flies multiplied again.

I―Violence Alert―smeared fruit flies against the wallboard. When Spence has time to finish the basement bathroom, he can paint it smooshed-fruit-fly brown.

Fruit flies multiplied yet again. I checked the Internet. One fruit fly can lay up to five hundred eggs, and development from egg to adult fly takes about a week. Sheesh. I needed help, and here’s where we raised spiders.

A herd of longbodied cellar spiders braved the bathroom light for the ample supply of fruit flies. They crisscrossed the bathroom with webs. Webs in rafters, around pipes, and triangulating corners? Great. I moved around those webs and let the spiders feast.

Webs in the sink, across the walk space, and under the toilet seat? Not where spiderwebs belong. So I trained the spiders like people train other domesticated animals. When a spider laid silk in an inappropriate place, I tapped the edge of the web to send a relocation notice. The spider vibrated in a circle then hustled on all eight legs over my hand. With the spider safe to dine on more fruit flies, I wiped the web away. In time, only newbies suffered the tap-vibrate-hustle evictions.

This week, my partners and I, with the help of high temperatures ranging from 59ºF (15ºC) to 45ºF (7ºC), got the fruit flies under control. The longbodied cellar spiders will dine on embalmed flies soon. And the web between the kitchen window pane and screen disappeared. Charlotte disappeared too. Our spider raising days dwindled.

Or not.

Tuesday morning, the sound of Spence tapping computer keys in the great room floated down the hall. I rolled over in bed and flung my arm onto the empty pillow. A false black widow spider shuffled from under the blanket to my arm. 

Not where spiders belong. Violence Alert.

Black and Yellow Garden Spider