Posts Tagged ‘arthropods’

Fatal Escape

Friday, 28 May 2010

To-day, when I was starting my shower, I saw what looked like a silverfish swirling around in the water. I don't want silverfish in my apartment, but didn't see any need for the thing to die, and the water hadn't been hot enough to kill it, so I held my hand over the drain, turned-off the water, and let what was in the tub drain slowly.

Sure enough, there was a water-logged silverfish. I grabbed a clean, empty bottle in which the silverfish could be held until I finished showering and dressing, and some bathroom tissue with which to pick-up the insect, as I could not pick it up with my bare fingers without crushing it.

I made the mistake of using dry tissue, which did not mold itself around the creature, and which wicked the remaining water off it, so that the thing was able to leap free…

…into the drain.

Well, I'd tried.

Acceptable Spider?

Tuesday, 13 October 2009
Meanwhile, zenicurean alerted me to
Surreal Vegetarian Spider Found — A First by Matt Kaplan at National Geographic

Though the spider does occasionally snack on ant larvæ, the bulk of their diet is plants, Meehan said.

Up-Date (2020:10/06): The original link is no longer valid, but here are articles on the spider in the academic literature:

Macrosoma

Saturday, 6 December 2008
[image of butterfly] Tucson Botanical Gardens (6 December 2008)

Shelob

Thursday, 25 September 2008

You know that childhood dread that, lurking behind things and in cracks, are big, black spiders? Some people outgrow that fear; such outgrowth is dementia. Those big, black spiders are really there.

In the course of a renovation, a local business placed a planter in front of their site; to-day, they pulled it away [image of store-front with planter pulled away] exposing one of those big, black spiders [image of big, black spider] [enlarged detail of image of big, black spider]