In my house, I have a rule: All rooms can have a resident spider, but only one per room.

It also depends on what kind of spider. A daddy long legs in the bedroom is OK, but my kitchen spider – a fierce and fast little predator – I’d move it elsewhere. Outdoors if the weather is ok, but in winter, to the garage or the cold cellar.

You may notice a little spider in the photo between the mouse figurine and the medication bottle. With its previous moult exoskeleton hanging above. If you really look, you’ll see that there is greater clarity in a circle around the spider. This is Charlotte’s cave.

Charlotte has been a very subdued presence on the window sill, hanging out at the mouth of her cave but retreating whenever I startle her. As she has been such an effective hunter there, I decided not to interfere — there’s no need.

But since I had to wreck her extended web today by taking away the medication bottle (using a pair of chopsticks), I removed her exoskeleton and her discarded prey. I was really quite surprised how small she started out when she moved in — she was a very tiny spider.

Now when she comes out of her cave, she’s a bold thing with a leg span greater than a 25¢ piece. Since the destruction of the cave, she hides behind the mouse figurine.

Last week, after more than a week without prey coming to her web wound around the frame of the window and various doodads not pictured above, she got off the window sill and wrapped a new web around the — I kid you not — handle of the kitchen faucet.

The first morning I just removed the web, but on the second morning, I felt a little sorry for her because the energy expenditure to do that work must mean she was hungry. I left the web intact, and just handled the faucet when I needed to use it. The web sagged with the direction the handle was throttled. Eventually, the web tore off.

I’m sure she’ll build a new web configuration overnight. If it starts expanding again, I might have to relocate her, with care, to the outside or to my garage. I have guests coming on the weekend and I won’t be around to supervise — I don’t want to freak them out too much. A sticky note with her name on it is insufficient information to say “this spider is ok by me.”

An update: Charlotte moved her web over to the left corner of the window, which is a great spot for her.  

The orb-weaver spider

We have this spider in Quebec. It’s perhaps all over the world. It weaves a web between plants in meadows. Because it is so energetically costly to weave a web, the spider creates a zig-zag pattern across with silk that is coated with proteins that show up in UV light (or else the zig-zag renders the view more obvious), so that birds don’t fly through in pursuit of insects. This idea is now being applied to glass, to reduce bird impacts. Read about it on the BBC website.

And now, a jumping spider!

Checking out the links on the side of Jim McCormack’s  blog, “Jumping spider!” jumped right out at me. I would write his blog if I had his unique set of characteristics, and he always matches the enthusiasm nature calls for. “Cute” is definitely the word I apply to jumping spiders, and I’m glad to see someone in the comments rethinking her relationship to spiders. It comes with a great macro picture of a little guy in full-on “you lookin‘ at me?” mode.

Yesterday (no macro lens or better-than-iPhone camera available) I had a wee Zebra spider, black and white striped, this guy, hanging out on the floor by my bag while I was working at my desk. An hour or so later, I turn around, and there he/she still is.

Now, these spiders are everywhere, perfectly harmless, and at times perfectly helpless. It just seemed terribly out of place sitting by my shoe, and a little listless when I went to pick it up. It didn’t want to climb onto my finger despite making it a finger-jail, but it willingly got onto a scrap of paper I offered. So I took it to the bathroom where the window was open, and let it go.

It explored the sill for a while, but then decided the great outdoors was really where it wanted to be. So my one good deed was done for the day. (I try not to tattle/brag about these acts, but I keep on doing it. Bragging negates valour, dontcha think?)

So I took it to the bathroom where the window was open, and let it go. It explored the sill for a while, but then decided the great outdoors was really where it wanted to be. So my one good deed was done for the day. (I try not to tattle/brag about these acts, but I keep on doing it. Bragging negates valour.)